Visio Reviews

I use it to design business models, cyber defense portals, and pictures. We are using the latest version of Visio.

We tried other design tools from Google and other companies. We also tried a few open-source solutions, and frankly, you don't get that professional finish in any other solution. Visio is more professional and accurate. 

I like all the features. I go online, and everything pops there. It is in the cloud, and everything is there. Even if there is a crash, everything is still there. I don't lose anything. That's what is the most valuable and likable. 

It is really a professional solution for designing. The designs look really nice in the PDF. 

They have to improve shapes. It has good shapes, but it certainly can have more shapes. There are no U shapes. It also requires more customizations. There are a lot of icons, but they can be modernized more. These icons have to be more customizable so that we are able to change the color and things like that.

It should also have more integration so that we can use it with other tools on the web. We don't use Microsoft Teams. We use Discord, which is more for gamers. It would be helpful if Visio is integrated with Discord. I can then show my work to my team.

We use Visio, and it is a must-have solution for us, but being a startup, we don't have the money to use the whole Microsoft system. Some day we will use Office. For companies like us, there should be connectors for other software. We should be able to use a connector with the software that we are using or with the new generation solutions. Connectors will make it very easy to transfer data.

I have been using Visio for three to five years.

It is stable. I never had a bug.

It is scalable. We are a small organization. We are a part of a startup, and there are about five to seven users who use it, which is not a big number, but it is enough for us. Architects and web designers are some of the users of this solution.

I never needed their service. It is so easy to use and stable. 

I used a workflow, which was free, but it wasn't better than Visio.

It is really easy.

There are some cheaper as well as free solutions.

It is natural and professional. It is very easy. You just align and drag and drop elements. That's the only thing Visio needs.

I would rate Visio a nine out of ten.

I would highlight BPMN 2.0 validation, as it eases the standardization of the Business Process Model within multi-disciplinary teams. Visio integrates seamlessly with the rest of the Office suite as any other Microsoft product, which is also worth mentioning.

Compared to other products we used in the past, modelling with Visio is faster and the final result in terms of appearance is more professional. Making changes to a diagram is also easier as the items and lines get re-arranged properly with few tweaks required.

It would be nice to have the possibility of exporting and importing XPDL, also considering that the Surface series are the MS flagship, there is much room for improvement when it comes to inking or drawing diagrams using pen input (which behaves like a mouse pointer).

XPDL stands for XML Process Definition Language, it is used to interchange business process model definitions between different workflow modelling tools. (e.g. Oracle Fusion Middleware)

Currently, MS Visio does not support import or export of XPDL files. Although some tools like Oracle Fusion have built in support for Visio files, I personally think this capability would be nice to have as would help companies using workflow tools modelling with Visio. As an example, the project I am working for right now uses Vitria Businessware which supports XPDL import, however as Visio does not have XPDL export capability workflows have to be created manually increasing the time to market.

WRT inking and pen input support; Microsoft Surface series lovely integrate with the MS Office suit with a functionality that allows the user to write on top of documents as if it were a printed copy just by using the pen on the screen. This functionality supports ink to shapes which transforms handwritten squares or circles into perfectly drawn shapes. This is not the case in Visio where pen support is non-existent and using it on the screen just emulates the mouse. This is just disappointing as the functionality is there for programs like Word but it is completely missing on Visio.

I’ve been using this tool for three years.

The product is pretty stable. We stumbled upon some bugs during these years of intense usage, but nothing major that couldn’t be solved by restarting the application.

This product is a desktop application, but coupled with SharePoint, it allows for concurrent editing of files without any issues.

We’ve never had to use the technical support for this product.

We started using Dia (free open source drawing editor) but we required a more fast and collaborative tool with better MS Word integration and better appearance.

The initial setup was as simple as installing any other MS office product.

Pricing and licensing depends on your needs and the time you expect to use the product. If you plan to use it for an extended period of time, Visio has two versions Standard and Professional where the Professional costs almost twice as the Standard edition with few more stencils and functionalities, but on the other hand Microsoft also offers the 365 option with one year commitment where you can use Visio Professional for almost three years before hitting the single license price.

We explored Lucidchart and Sparx Enterprise Architect as alternatives.

I would recommend anyone looking into purchasing this product to review thoroughly each version features as both are quite similar.

The most valuable feature is that it is integrated with other tools in the Microsoft Office suite, as well as at the backend with products like SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

I think that it feels a bit outside with respect to the icons that are available.

It should be easier to integrate with other platforms like Confluence, or other content management platforms for exporting and collaborating on drawings.

It would be helpful if Visio could open drawings from other kinds of tools.

I have been using Microsoft Visio for at least 10 years.

This is a stable solution and we plan to continue using it for the foreseeable future.

Visio is a scalable product. We have perhaps 300 users in the company.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

I did not use another similar solution before this one.

Our in-house team installed the product for me.

If you are using other Microsoft products then I can recommend using Visio.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

It is a good diagramming application. I am an AV systems design engineer. I use it primarily to create functional drawings. I also use it for the basic floor plan and wall elevation drawings.

I don't have to hand-sketch my engineering concepts. The work that I hand off to other departments is clear and easy to read.

The ability to change quickly between tools, such as pointer, connector, drawing, and text tools. Perhaps utilizing right-or-center clicking of the mouse could be an excellent addition. Also, the means of turning off Dynamic Grid by default would be a good thing.

Currently, it is on by default and has a habit of getting in the way of what I'm trying to do. A long-time Visio glitch involves the length of lines.

Sometimes, if I use the size and position window to enter a specific length of any type of line, including dimension lines, Visio simply takes it upon itself to make that line a different length of its choosing. This glitch has persisted in every version of Visio that I have used since Microsoft bought the product from its original developer.

I have been a Visio user since 1995.

In the sense that the product has been on the market for more than 25 years and is sold by Microsoft, it is very stable. In terms of its potential to destabilize my computer, it is not dangerous.

In companies where I have worked, its adoption rate among people in similar job functions to mine is often left to the individual. Some may be more comfortable using other solutions (Adobe Acrobat, AutoCAD). I have not seen the Visio product ever rolled out across an entire company's engineering staff. However, I suppose that this could happen.

Technical support is hit and miss. When glitches come up, it can be difficult to engage with a true expert on the Microsoft side. Some glitches in this product have persisted through the years, and versions, even when they are brought to the attention of the Microsoft Visio team.

Computers and OSs get old and need to be replaced. When they are replaced, the newest versions of any software are the ones that run best under the newest OSs.

I have the product on both my home and work PCs. My company's IT department handled the installation and setup of Visio 2013 on my work machine. At home, I installed and set up Visio 2017 with no problems.

We evaluated Microsoft and AutoDesk.

In my evaluation, my main criteria/question I asked was: "Do they have the best product to accomplish what I need to get done?"

Whatever you use, it has to work for you. If the GUI is not intuitive from your point of view, you won't want to use it, and it won't be a good investment.

My primary use case for Visio is network diagrams to document our local and wide area networks. We also use it from time to time to document business processes and logical systematic processes. 

Visio has helped streamline our documentation.

The most valuable feature of this product is its versatility.

An area for improvement would be the product's footprint - it's a very large install that uses many gigabytes. There are also sometimes bugs when working with documents on a network drive.

I've been using Visio for about twenty years.

Visio is very stable, and very few staff are needed for maintenance.

I don't think scalability is particularly relevant to this product as I use it.

Microsoft's basic support is very difficult to work with. However, we have recently invested in the premier support package, which is a lot more money but is actually very good.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward.

I used an in-house team for implementation.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

What I like the most is the simplicity and ease of usage.

The reason I like it is that we, as consultants, use PowerPoint a lot, and it's easy to drag it and put in a slide of PowerPoint since it's a Microsoft product.

The simulation is an area that requires improvement.

In the next release, I would like to see the simulation improved. It's a Microsoft based, so it's still good, but it needs simulation. 

I have been working with Visio for the past four years.

If we were to say that stable was equal to 100 and unstable was equal to zero, I would give Visio a 50 percent. I would say that if it's a product-based usage for Visio, and it is highly-critical, then I wouldn't use Visio.

For anything that has to do with numbers or with low-level visualization of the system, I wouldn't use Visio because I would need simulation.

If simulation falls under stability, then I would say that it is not stable.

I have not contacted technical support.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We do not use the latest version. 

I am a network engineer and we use the solution for drawing network diagrams. 

I like the solution's ease of use and its the integration with different templates from a variety of manufacturers.

The solution should have better integration capabilities with MacOS and Linux.

We have been using Visio since 2010.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We have never contacted technical support concerning Microsoft Visio. 

The solution is easy to install. It took, perhaps, 15 minutes. 

One can do installation on his own. 

Just a single manager is responsible for the deployment. 

There is a licensing fee, but it is fairly priced. It is on a monthly basis. 

We did not evaluate other options before going with the solution. 

There are five people, network engineers, who use the solution in my organization. 

I would recommend it to others. 

I rate Visio as a ten out of ten. 

We use Visio for describing processes, port authorities, requests, exchange of documents, and authorizations. The main use is for business processes and descriptions.

It is easy to use.

The user interface could be simplified and easier to use.

I have been using Visio for a couple of years.

It's a stable solution.

This is an area that we did not explore as it was not necessary for us to scale. It was not a requirement.

We had 10 customers using this solution.

We don't have plans to increase our usage. I am with a different company.

Technical support was fine. I did not have any issues with the technical support.

Before Visio, we used Bizagi.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy to install.

We implemented this solution ourselves. We did not use an integrator.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Visio an eight out of ten.