Visio Reviews

Documenting the enterprise architecture.

Helps us to quickly visualize the architecture.

The ability to draw models quickly.

I would like to see traceability. It doesn't have it. You cannot find one object amongst several sheets of Visio diagrams.

The stability is good. It's stable.

I find that it's very scalable from a small organization to a large organization.

To determine what product or solution you're looking for, talk to many vendors and get their opinions.

The most important criterion, for me, when selecting a vendor, is customer service.

I would rate Visio at seven out of 10 but I would give it a 10 if it had traceability.

It's been an extremely reliable solution for me for a very long time. It's quite mature.

If you are a knowledgeable individual, the initial setup isn't too difficult.

There are plenty of very good third-party tools.

The stability is fairly good.

The solution can scale to meet the needs of any project.

The issue I have with this solution is the same issue I have with all the products by Microsoft. They depend on many solutions by third parties for too many things, from my point of view. Maybe there should be more basic, fundamental resources incorporated into their products in general - not just this product.

A basic user may have issues trying to install the solution.

There are a lot of patches that sometimes change how one version will interact compared to another.

It would be great if, in the future, we would be able to use numerics and graphics cards. If there already this functionality, they need to make it more publicly known, as I don't see it right now.

I've been working with Microsoft products for 30 years or so. With this product, I've used it from time to time, when I've needed it. I'm not sure the exact amount of time I've spent with it over the years. It's likely much more than ten years.

The solution, for the most part, is very, very stable. There is one problem in that there are so many upgrades and patches and so on that are critical and must be applied that it makes for a few issues in terms of practical use. I was facing such a very specific problem. The project was functional in an older version, yet the same code was not functional in the newer version. Therefore, to troubleshoot, I used both older and newer versions of the software and had to acquire all the patches for both. There is no clear answer as to why the same code behaves differently within these two APIs. That's a problem. However, it's not really a stability issue.

The solution is quite scalable, and great to use for any project of any size or scope.

I only use the solution for my personal use and therefore don't have access to technical support. I can't speak to how helpful they are, or how responsive, as I do not use them. I don't have any practical experience to speak to.

That said, having dealt with Microsoft technical support in the past with other solutions, I can say that, in general, they are very capable and have many experienced people on staff to assist. I've been satisfied with them in the past on other products.

The initial setup is pretty simple and straightforward for those with knowledge or training. Basic users may have problems, however.

For myself, with so many years of experience with many types of Microsoft solutions, I found everything very straightforward.

It's not that the process isn't intuitive, it's just that, if you don't know what to do or look for, it can become a bit confusing. You must study many new terms and methodologies before you can get around to beginning the process as a completely new untrained user. There may be ways to watch videos online to learn a few tricks and to help you visualize the process.

I have many years of experience with Visio and Microsoft, therefore, I can handle the installation process myself.

I primarily use the solution myself for my own projects. I'm a customer and end-users.

In general, I would rate the solution at a six out of ten.

I would recommend this product, however, at the same time, I suggest to everybody to know and practically use several tools, so as to keep up their overall knowledge and skills. For some purposes, it is easier and more reliable to use one tool, and for other purposes, it is more reliable to use another. I do not recommend to anybody globally to work alone with one tool, separately from all the world.

We use Visio for process diagram. 

The interface is the most valuable aspect of this solution. 

My colleagues are not satisfied with this solution for many reasons. They don't see end-to-end processes or the layers of one process.

When you use a BPA solution you can open an end-to-end process in one window, go down, or go up between layers to different places. You should be able to see descriptions of the steps of the process.

Integration with third-party vendors is another aspect that needs improvement. 

I have been using Visio for three to four years. 

We don't have any stability problems. 

We have local technical support. We have an IT department and the department solves all of our problems. They contact local support if need be. 

The price will always be high. It depends on the organization size, how many processes there are, and what requirements you have for the solution. If you require additional features like analysis, it will be a different price. It's a balance between requirements and price.

My recommendation would depend on a few factors like the size of the organization. If it's a small organization and it does not have so many processes, I think Visio is a good solution. For larger organization solutions like Segnavio and Orbus would be better. Those are more complex solutions. 

I would rate Visio a six out of ten. We don't have a holistic vision of our processes so I can't open a process. If I open a process in Visio, I can't see how it's connected to other processes. 

The primary use case is modeling architecture requirements.

The most valuable features are ease of use and flexibility.

One of the things that I like is the automation from external data.

The user interface is fine.

I would like to see better integration with external data sources.

Sharing work with colleagues is sometimes an issue with this product.

I would like to see integration with Microsoft Teams.

I have been using Visio for the past fifteen years.

Visio is a very stable product.

Given that it's a desktop application, you can't scale it. You can't do much and sometimes, sharing is an issue.

I have never used technical support.

They do have lots of videos and everything is available online.

As it is a Microsoft product, the installation is easy.

The yearly cost is approximately $400 CAD ($300 USD). 

My advice for anybody who is implementing Visio is to establish the right templates for your project. Templating the models is very important so that everybody has the same ones.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The interface of the solution is very good. It's easy to navigate.

We've found that the technical support has been pretty helpful overall.

The project management and the business process are both very good.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The solution should be included in Microsoft Office 365. For some reason, it's not. It should be bundled in with everything else. If they did, clients and customers would benefit a lot.

Just because you have technical support for other Microsoft products does not necessarily mean you will have it for Visio.

I've been using the solution for ten years at this point. It's been a decade. It's been a long time. However, currently, I only use it occasionally.

The solution is quite stable. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's been very good over the years. That said, I haven't used it as much as I used to recently.

Not too many people use the solution in our organization.

While we do have technical support for other products, we don't have any for Visio. 

That said, in general, Microsoft does offer very good technical support. We just done get it for this product.

The initial setup is not complex. It's straightforward and pretty simple. However, I myself have a lot of experience with Microsoft. I've been working with Microsoft for 25 years and have handled fairly sizable products in the past.

We use an older version of the solution. We don't use the latest one. It might be either the 2015 or 2016 version.

We're customers and end-users. We aren't consultants or resellers. We don't have a business relationship with the company. We are big clients, however. We have a volume license.

Overall, I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

I use this solution as a graphic design tool for breaking down a flow or process. I'm a systems engineer and customer of Visio.

I like the fact that as you drag and move things around, everything keeps track of each of its connections. So you don't have to be bothered by mechanics of connecting things again in the right place. It just follows on. It's also a good diagramming tool.

I've had a variety of issues, usually related to the system architecture. It's almost like a general purpose tool but it's important to understand the interfaces and the components and how they're related to each other. It would be helpful if you could layer things easily for the diagrams so you can decompose a given object and see it both at the macro and at the breakout level and still have those kinds of connections would remain. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

This solution is primarily used for architecture diagramming, process flow, and process mapping. We work on engineering projects, including software development projects, and this solution is used to create proposals for customers.

Prior to using this solution, we would draw a proposed architecture in PowerPoint and submit it to the client. With Visio, I can explain it to them in a step by step manner. For example, I will take one block and go into detail about it. I can explain how the architecture works inside a block, which might include how each tier in a multitier architecture functions.

Putting details into the process flow and being able to link other objects into the diagrams are very helpful features.

I would like to be able to present diagrams in multiple ways, such as a Swimlane diagram. Also, in other products such as TIBCO Nimbus, there are links that take you to a completely different diagram.

While I can use Visio for architectural diagrams and simple process mapping, there is room for improvement. The business process mapping capability would be really improved if we could link two completely different processes together. For example, in a company with multiple departments, I would like to have links between processes in the different departments.

I would also like to be able to embed objects into diagrams that can be opened by clicking on an icon. These are things like Excel or Word documents, or a PowerPoint presentation.

Eventually, the images or icons that we use in Visio will become obsolete, and we would like to have a way of suggesting new design options.

I have not worked with various versions of the solution, but from what I can see it is pretty stable.

Because I am the direct coordinator with the customer, I am the primary user of this software in my company.

This solution would be more scalable with this inclusion of additional features.

I don't normally use technical support. Rather, I check in Quora or in the forums.

We used to create PowerPoint presentations and submit them to the customer. They were not interactive, the way Visio is.

We used TIBCO Nimbus for our business consulting projects.

I was not involved in the installation because we do not have it installed on our company servers. Rather, the clients have it installed on their machines. I just access it remotely on the customers' servers.

We did not evaluate other solutions before implementing Visio.

If you know how to use Visio and you know what you want to get as an output, then it's very helpful and easy. But, for beginners, or for anyone who wants to prepare a more informative diagram, I'm not sure if Visio is a very helpful tool. Once you have hands-on experience then it is easy to figure out.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

The feature that I like the most, as simple as it may seem, is the addition of the vendor's vectors and shapes. I'm able to utilize the actual brands of our network appliances as devices to have a more accurate picture of our actual network and the server room setup.

By utilizing Visio, we have been able to put on paper our network design, server room setup, and network connections. It makes things a lot easier to troubleshoot and figure out where the issues, errors, or disconnects may be happening. This also helps when explaining to the upper management any questions in regards to our network environment.

At this point in time, it serves its purpose. I can't think of something that could be improved as of today. I'm sure there is something that can be improved, but nothing for my current needs.

I have been using Visio probably since 2008, so it has been almost 10 years now.

I, primarily, started using it in school to do basic network diagrams, but now I've used it to even draw out full floor plans for our network designs based on our building floor plan.

There were no stability issues experienced.

There were no scalability issues experienced.

I haven't requested any technical support for this tool. I'm sure it is great as I have used Microsoft Support in the past, and it has been great. So, I don't doubt that it would be the same for this product as well.

Previously, I was using PowerPoint. It was obvious why I switched over to this solution. It is the product that we needed back then when drafting the floor plans and networks.

The setup is just like any other Microsoft program, it is straightforward. Get the software, follow the prompts to install the products and it just works.

As most Microsoft products, the price is not the cheapest but you just cannot pass this tool. So when you buy it for you/your team, save money and buy only what you need. We installed it in our Techroom computer so that all the members can use and access it. Thus, one license serves the purpose of all three of us.

When using this tool, research your current vendors and manufacturers to get their most up to date shapes and vectors, so you can always design or draft your Visio projects using the most accurate picture.