Visio Reviews

The company uses Visio for a maintenance project occasionally. I use Visio for infrastructure architecture and create data models on it.

The most valuable feature of Visio is diagram creation. If you have a presentation, you can create your data model using Visio. The tool has Microsoft components you can find in Microsoft Power BI, particularly the drag-and-drop functionality and link creation between the two components.

An area for improvement in Visio is pricing. It's a costly tool for my company because it only uses Visio occasionally.

I've only used Visio four or five times in the ten years it's been in my company.

Stability-wise, Visio is an eight out of ten.

I didn't see the option to scale Visio because it's one user at a time and installed on your local machine, so I'm not sure about its scalability.

The initial setup for Visio is easy because it's a Microsoft product.

Visio is a pricey tool. It's a five out of ten, cost-wise. It would be great if it had a pay-per-use licensing model because my company uses it sparingly. If Visio had a two-day use license, that would be helpful.

My company uses Visio, but not very frequently.

My rating for Visio is eight out of ten.

My primary use case is for designing the architecture diagram and the network diagram. 

The most valuable feature is how easy it is to use. 

Visio could be improved by adding more features. If you look at draw.io, they have more features. Also, if you want to design something for the cloud, Microsoft Azure still isn't enabled, so you need to install the plugin. This prototype is easily available, though. 

I have been using this solution for almost ten years. 

The stability is quite good. There is not much maintenance really required. If it's on your desktop and something goes wrong, it is usually available to repair again. You don't need anyone else to maintain it. 

I previously used the Sparx System Enterprise Architect, but my experience with it was limited. It was discontinued because they stopped the licensing. 

The installation was straightforward. It takes about five to ten minutes and you can do it yourself. 

I implemented myself. 

I pay for the license and it is very expensive. If you're only going to use this tool from time to time, you can save money by just using the available online tools. But if you plan on using it heavily, then it's worth it to invest. 

I would rate this product an eight out of ten. I recommend this product to others because it's a useful tool for designers and architects. 

We use Visio for mapping all the processes. It is a BPMN solution for us.

We are most probably using its latest version. 

It is a standard and easy-to-use solution from Microsoft, and you benefit from the general functions of Microsoft solutions. It integrates easily with SharePoint, which is a useful tool from Microsoft.

It is not flexible in terms of functions and modeling deliverables. When you speak of processes, the program has to describe the activities and the deliverables. You have to tell your robots how to deal with and input something, and you should have something more flexible from this point of view.

I got Visio just a few months ago.

I don't know. At this moment, it is just used to map and see where we are. We are just trying to use this. At this moment, we like it, but we'll see with time.

I didn't have to call Microsoft so far, but I might do so in the future.

I have used MEGA, and I feel Visio is better than MEGA because it is a BPMN tool, and it is standardized.

I have also used the free version of Camunda. It is a service, and it is easy and very fast, but it is not so well known. 

It is easy.

It is a free solution for us. It is integrated with our pack. We are trying to use the solutions that we already have. 

I am not sure if I would recommend this solution. It is not perfect, of course, but it is also not so bad. It is just a modeling system. If you want to go further and simulate the processes, you will have to use other tools. 

I would rate Visio a seven out of 10.

I use the solution for process mapping and improvement.

The solution is user-friendly.

The performance sometimes lags and has room for improvement.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for a few years.

The solution is stable.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment took under 15 minutes by following the documentation.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We pay annually for the Visio license and it is expensive.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Visio is user-friendly and I recommend the solution to others.

There is a limitation in Visio. The solution is not aligned with a database. I can't submit more than one request at a time or do any calculations or have multiple users, or multiple procedures.

Microsoft needs to put more effort into data analysis around the tips and workflow related to the number of skills, procedures, and any small analytical information.

I would like Visio to use AI to evaluate the processing side because currently, it is not logically based.

I would like to have reports added to the solution. For example, if I drove a business process that related to a service, and this service related to another service, I would depict some servers. Reports which predict that from more than the related service would be very beneficial. These related procedures or related processes would take place on the solution's servers, database, and application.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give the stability of the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution is easy to scale.

We currently have around 20 users.

The technical support is easy to access and receive resolution.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I give the cost of Visio a five out of ten.

I give the solution a five out of ten.

There may be other solutions that are better than Visio on the market but when we complete an analysis we can conclude that the cost and ease of use of Visio are good.

I recommend the solution to other users.

I build either diagrams for solutions or use Visio to create illustrations for slide decks and white papers.

There's a much better library of stencils than there used to be. But I still have to create many composite objects to illustrate a software-defined data center or software-defined networking. I like that once you create what you need, you can group that, at least within that drawing, and you have access to that new stencil object or that custom object throughout that drawing.

I do know that Microsoft has extended the ability of Visio to interact with other Microsoft applications. I know you can use Visio elements in spreadsheets and Excel. I know that doing a copy and paste from Visio into a PowerPoint slide is very easy and clean now. It used to be a nightmare.

The auto-routing feature could be better. Around 2018, the auto-routing of lines was pretty close to perfect, but it's started to go downhill from there. Keeping the lines attached to endpoints while you manipulate how they run and how they interact with other shapes or near other shapes is becoming very tedious. I would like them to give us the option of opening up the rules for auto-routing and make checkbox selections of what rules we want to apply and what rules we don't.

I've been using Visio for about 20 years.

Visio is stable. It's gotten to be much more robust since Microsoft took over. It used to freeze or crash with very complex drawings, and I haven't had a freeze or a crash in years.

I think it's scalable. I don't think I challenge what it can do the way I used to. I think Microsoft has probably improved how it uses memory, or they may have solved some memory leak problems because I did not have any issue with the size of a drawing. 

I've never reached a limit on the size of a drawing, and usually, autosave is turned on by default. Again, right about the time Microsoft acquired Visio, the autosave function took much longer than it does now. I can also open more additional applications while Visio is running, but it used to hit its limits on that. They have improved its ability to run in the same environment with other big apps.

The initial setup is getting much easier. The deployment piece was actually just part of my license. The IT team can set up definitions of which engineers get what features in Microsoft. That was completely transparent to me this time.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Visio a nine.

My use case could be anything. What I like to use Visio for is business process design work. Even when we're doing a systems implementation project, I'll use it. One of the things that I tell my clients is that "Before you implement a system, you really need to check your business processes that the system is automating, to make sure that you're not automating a bad process." Therefore, we have a whole methodology on how to do business process design sessions, facilitated sessions. The outcome of those sessions is documented largely in Vizio. 

Sometimes, for example, if I've got a good person working on my team, I'll be with the client, facilitating the session and we'll have sticky notes on the wall that represent the process steps, and the outcomes, and the inputs, and all that stuff. We'll be moving those around. And then somebody on my team will be sitting there with Visio, recreating it as we go. If they aren't able to do that, we just take pictures of it and then recreate it in Visio. We clean it up and make it nice looking. However, we use Visio primarily for business and/or project process flows. 

It's a very good visualization tool that helps package everything professionally. It helps clients see where we're going. We're able to capture what we need to capture and we're able to manipulate it the way we want and make it look the way we want, and present it to our clients the way we want. 

One of the features I like is the automation involved in creating a process. It's really improved over the years. At this point, when you have step one - let's say it's a rectangle with step one in it - and then you're ready for step two, you can just hover the cursor over one side, and then it will automatically add an arrow going to the next box and automatically add a new box. It saves a bit of time there. It's one less aggravation to deal with when you're creating things.

The solution hasn't changed much in 20 years. It's a very meat and potatoes type of product and isn't overly designed. It's very easy to find your way through the solution, as it's not too complicated.

Occasionally, the automation feature that helps you easily add the "next step" goes crazy and it will move a bunch of stuff on me. Usually, that's very easily recoverable, however, that's just a little aggravation we have to deal with. It's like an ongoing glitch of sorts. You need to be careful when you are moving the whole image.

If there was a way to make the finished product more interactive somehow, that could be interesting.

I've been using the solution for decades. It's been a very long time.

The solution is quite stable. To my recollection, I haven't really had to deal with any crashes or big bugs. It's reliable.

I'm just a small consulting firm. Basically, it's just me and a group of trusted subcontractors that I network with across the country. The biggest project and the biggest team of people I've ever had on a project is 25.

We don't have enterprises that we deploy to. We just put it all on our computers or on our laptops and that's it.

I don't ever recall using technical support, and if I did, it was likely well over ten years ago at this point. Therefore, I can't really speak to their knowledgeability or responsiveness.

The initial setup is very straightforward. All you do is implement or install it on your laptop. It has a few defaults that I don't like, however, that I can change. For example, the process boxes might be colored purple or something, and I just want them clear, so that's not a big deal. There are some pre-settings you can adjust so that it defaults to how you need it to look every time.

I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 that automatically updates all of the versions to whatever is the most recent. I have to have a special subscription to get Visio though. Therefore, I've got one subscription to Microsoft that has all of the basic Office products, and then another one for Visio and Microsoft Project.

I did run across at one of my clients several years ago, another process building software. I don't remember the name of it. I'd have to look it up, however, I recall it was really slick and nice and cool. In my mind, it was a little too over-engineered and overly complicated for what I like to do. I'd have to be careful that we're not losing sight. We're not missing the forest for the trees when we get into the business process design. Therefore, I didn't really feel I was missing out by not adopting it.

I'm a consultant.

I tend to use the latest version of the solution. I try to keep everything up to date. That said, I'm unsure as to which version I'm on right now.

We're a small consulting shop. Right now, there's three of us and the roles are generally around facilitating business process design sessions. That's what we usually do is. Typically, I will stand up and facilitate with the client. We'll have a room full of clients - maybe 10, and sometimes it has the vendor - and our team. I will facilitate, we'll capture all of the discussions. We'll put everything on sticky notes, on a wall, with our methodology. And then my folks will capture all of that on Visio and on Microsoft Word. Then we go back to clean it all up and make it presentable. 

Overall, it's very easy to use. It's very intuitive and if you're documenting business processes, it does the trick. It's not like there's no other software out there that will do something similar or something as well. However, I've used Visio for so long. It's just a habit and I don't see any reason to try anything else.

I'd rate it ten out of ten. There's a reason I've been using it for so long. It does everything I need it to do without having too many confusing bells and whistles

As process improvement professional I map out current state processes either at the value stream or swim lane level, at times both. With current state I identify pain points and bottlenecks do root cause analysis, identify possible solutions, and make recommendations on which ones I think would be the most effective. Then incorporate them into a proposed future state. 

Once we developed custom templates and shape libraries it provided a common look and feel that our stakeholders have come to understand, which is helping them to develop a continuous improvement mindset. 

We are all familiar with it, and it is easy to use. There is a lot of flexibility, and you can create custom templates with standard shapes. 

It would be nice if we could develop a custom database. We have looked into this functionality, but all of the other solutions that have a database are very locked down, and you have to use them their way. You can't define your own systems, tools, and inputs etc. For example, if we have systems that are used in multiple processes, and we want to know what processes use those systems we should be able to query the database for processes that include a specific system. A uses case could be system X being phased out so we need to know what processes will be impacted, so that we can ensure that those processes are all taken into account in any decisions to replace that system.

Additionally, Visio should have the ability to capture metrics such as demand, work time, cycle time, .. for each step in the process. Then those metrics should be able to be linked to a spreadsheet to enable data analysis that remains aligned with the process map so that changes remain aligned between Visio and Excel. Other systems attempt to provide this functionality, but the spreadsheet functionality is not as robust as Excel. 

I have been using Visio for six years.

It is stable.

There are no scalability issues. We are a nationwide company, and there are around 5,000 users.

I never had to contact them.

I never used another solution long-term, but I have evaluated various and continue to see Visio as the best option. 

The initial setup was easy. It has been around for so long. All of us have used it before, so it is not like it was new to us. 

Good. 

Most other tools are expensive.  

I was already using Visio for years before evaluating other options.

I advise standardizing the file naming conventions so it is easier to find what you need when you need it.