Microsoft has now made Visio Online available. Similar to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote it is now possible to maintain your Visio Drawings directly within a document library.

Do make sure though that you have enabled preview features  within your SharePoint Admin Center (Settings -> Preview Features).

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 preview

Then within your library you will find the Visio drawing option:

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 visio

You will find that Visio Online starts:

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 vopreview

So how does this all work? It seems to be quite different compared to the desktop version of Visio.

First of all, when starting with Visio Online be prepared to find the following dialog appearing. It took me about 6.5 seconds before I got the first one.

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 oopsvisio

 

Shape Sets

It all starts with shape sets. With the still very limited number of shape sets it is possible to add your shapes. Simply click on a Shape Set and add the Shape Set. Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 shapesets

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 basicshapes

Then the Shape Set will become available to use within your diagram. Once you have added all the Shape Sets you can use them all.

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 addedshapesets

Although the functionality is still quite limited (It is preview not for nothing), it only took a few moments to create a Visio drawing.

 

Sessions Timeout

When drawing diagrams do make sure that you don’t walk away too often. As timeout dialogs will appear within a couple of minutes of doing nothing:

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 timeout

Opening existing Visio files

Then I tried as my final test to open a Visio file that I created using the desktop version of Visio  and I was presented with this dialog:

Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 oopsvisio2It looks like although this is a good start the new Visio Online is far from production ready and it is very much different from the Visio I’m used to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then one more  test to finish this article off. I tried to open a Visio file that I created in Visio Online in the Desktop version of Visio. Office 365 - Visio Online available Microsoft Office 365 viruswarning1After first receiving a Virus warning the file opened in Visio. So that seems to at work as expected.

 

 

 

 

Avatar for Pieter Veenstra

By Pieter Veenstra

Business Applications Microsoft MVP working as the Head of Power Platform at Vantage 365. You can contact me using contact@sharepains.com

2 thoughts on “Office 365 – Visio Online available”
  1. Visio I must of been fortunate no dialogue box warnings. Everything worked. I was surprised having read the article and the fact I’m currently experiencing OneDrive for Business SharePoint sync problems. Clearly a challenge as Microsoft support as yet hasn’t found a solution despite hours of online diagnosis to find and rectify the fault. Perhaps week two a solution will be found.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from SharePains by Microsoft MVP Pieter Veenstra

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading