Using Visio and Visio Services - Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 - page 273

After completing both steps, you can use various Visio techniques and features to take advantage
of that data, including using the visualization techniques described in the next section. And, because
the data link is dynamic, as the data in the external data source changes, you can refresh your dia-
gram so that it always reflects the latest information.
Visualizing data
Visio 2007 introduced a very compelling feature that can be used to create dashboards and other BI
user interface (UI) designs. Although the idea behind data graphics is simple—to annotate shapes on
the drawing page with text callouts, icons, or colors based on the data inside the shapes—the poten-
tial provided by data graphics is enormous because each data graphic is generated dynamically. If the
data in a shape changes, the graphic is updated automatically.
The data-graphic feature is even more powerful when you combine it with the data-linking capa-
bility described in the preceding section. In the linked scenario, a data change in a SQL database is
refreshed into a Visio diagram, which causes an icon on a Visio shape to change color, or the needle
in a speedometer to move, or the height of a bar graph to change. Your Visio diagram becomes a
near-real-time reflection of your organization's data.
Each pair of images, shown in Figures 9-3 and 9-4, presents two views of a portion of a diagram.
In the basic view on the left, the arrangement of the shapes certainly tells part of a story, and each
shape displays a description or name. On the right, however, the same diagram conveys data graphi-
cally and moves beyond simply being a diagram to communicating valuable information at a glance.
Figure 9-3 shows several servers in a network diagram.
FIGURE 9-3 Two views of a network diagram, without and with Visio data graphics.