Data-linked diagrams: Creating a diagram

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Yana Terukhova is a Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team.

Visio offers over 60 types of professional templates to build compelling diagrams, and organization charts are among most the frequently created. Visio organization charts are simple and visual, but what if you want to connect them to key business indicators tracked by your organization, such as sales by region, budget by department, vacation status, or training progress? Sometimes this information is located in another source, like Excel or  a complex database. Data-linked diagrams let you add data to Visio diagrams--no code required--and anyone in an organization can quickly create such dashboards to get better insights into data using Visio Professional 2013 or Visio Pro for Office 365.

We’ll start with an organization chart diagram like this one.

The data you add to the organization diagram can be in an Excel file, populated from Exchange/Active Directory, or constructed manually by dragging shapes on a page.

Tip: if you pull data from Active Directory or Exchange, you must have Outlook installed and configured with an active profile--the requirement is a MAPI connection. Visio uses MAPI to get data, so if you don’t have one, the data import will fail.

In this example, the Excel file has three columns: Name, Title and Reports To. Visio uses this information to determine how to organize the reporting relationships in your organization chart.

From the Visio start screen, select or search for Organization Chart.

Once the wizard starts, select Information that’s already stored in a file or database. Then you can tell Visio what columns have your hierarchy information and where to import pictures from, if you have them.

 You can specify a folder with your pictures, and as long as there is a field that Visio can match to (such as Name). Visio will automatically associate them with the correct organization chart shape.

Once you’re finished, you’ll have an organization chart that looks like this:

Now you can click the Org Chart tab on the ribbon and make changes to reflect what you’re looking for, including spacing and other variants.

In this case, we used the Coin design to add a splash of color:

Although this example focuses on mapping departments of people, you can use the Organization Chart Wizard to map all sorts of hierarchical data--a website map, for example--as long as you can clearly format that data in Excel.

–Yana Terukhova, Product Marketing Manager

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Webinar: Creating Forms in Word

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In this week's webinar, you'll learn about using forms in Word, including working with templates, personalizing, and locking the form.  

What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar:

Using templatesPersonalizing formsLocking a formA cool trick for typing into a scanned doc

References for this webinar:

Go to http://aka.ms/offweb for more information on how to join the series.

--Doug Thomas

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Webinar: Creating and using watermarks

In this week Webinar we explain what is a watermark and how you insert with Word 2010. We also go over the different types of watermark, which you can insert such as text or image watermarks.

What do you learn in this Webinar:

Insert a watermark "Draft" page sHow a WatermarkHow, a watermark on just one side insert image

References for this Webinar:

Go to http://aka.ms/offweb more information about how the series to join.

--Doug Thomas

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5 Challenges to Overcome in Creating Content & How to Do It

5 Challenges to Overcome in Creating Content & How to Do It « Social Practice function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Social Practice / 5 Challenges to Overcome in Creating Content & How to Do Itby Heather Kuta  

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Training: Creating Meaningful assets for your elearning courses

May 25, 2012

Date: Thursday, June 7, 2012 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM US/Pacific

Description:

Join Alice Acker, Adobe Captivate Expert along with Vish and Dr. Pooja Jaisingh to learn the nuances of selecting and using assets like images and videos for your elearning courses. During the session, we will also discuss how to make use of Adobe Captivate and Adobe Photoshop to select, manage and edit the assets for an effective use inside the course.

What’s in it for you?

After attending the session, you will be able to:

Carefully select the assets for your elearning course from different sourcesCreate assets from the internal sources like people images or office images etc.Edit images using Adobe Captivate and Adobe Photoshop

To Register: http://adobe.ly/KT6XZY

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Creating Custom Shapes in PowerPoint 2010

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(Note: Creating and combining custom shapes is a tool introduced in PowerPoint 2010 that lots of presenters find useful. We first published this post in February 2010 and ever since then people have been looking it up so here it is again.)

PowerPoint has a lot of great preset shapes, but sometimes what you really need is a custom shape tailored-made for your presentation. If you’re looking to go beyond the Freeform Tool to create more complex custom shapes, we’ve created a new feature in PowerPoint 2010 called Combine Shapes to help you do just that! Using the principles of Boolean Geometry, the Combine Shapes tool allows you to create new shapes by combining multiple shapes in one of four ways: Union, Combine, Subtract, or Intersect.  


This is a relatively advanced feature, so it doesn’t appear by default on the Ribbon. To enable Combine Shapes, add it to your Ribbon via the PowerPoint Options dialog: PowerPoint Options > Customize Ribbon > Commands Not in the Ribbon  > Combine Shapes. (For more information on how to add items and customize your Ribbon and QAT, see this post).

In just a few clicks, you can quickly and easily create intricate and unique geometries by combining simple shapes in various ways. Here’s an example where we create a key shape using only ovals, rectangles, and triangles.
Step 1: Draw the silhouette of a key using several basic shapes, and merge them using “Shape Union” to create the body of the key:

Step 2: Draw shapes to represent the negative areas (i.e. the “holes” in the key). Select the body of the key first, then select the “holes”, and use “Shape Subtract” to cut them out:

Want even more control over the shape’s geometry? Custom shapes created using the Combine Shapes tool are freeforms, so you can take advantage of the Edit Points feature to further fine-tune your shape:

Add a gradient fill and some 3D effects to turn your custom shape into an eye-popping graphic!

     

With PowerPoint 2010, you no longer have to worry about not being able to find the perfect shape or Clip Art… if you can’t find one, create one yourself! Here are a few more examples of custom graphics created by PowerPoint’s Product Planner, Tal Krzypow, using the Combine Shapes tool:

Download the Office 2010 Beta today and try your hand at creating your own custom shapes. We’d love to hear what you think!

Chris Doan
Program Manager, Office Graphics

Updated (Feb 2): Changed the instructions to reflect the location of this feature in the PowerPoint 2010 Beta. Originally we posted instructions on how to find this feature in the released version.

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Gregg Witkin: A Passion For Creating With Purpose

As a full time teacher, Adobe Youth Voices lead educator, and father of two, Gregg Witkin has a full schedule. And while he would normally spend what little free time he has pursuing his passions for ice hockey, scuba diving and underwater photography, Gregg has agreed to invest his time this spring into being a judge for the Adobe Youth Voices Aspire Awards, a global youth media competition.

Gregg knows first hand the power of arts education to ignite a lifelong interest. “When I was in school, I struggled with my traditional art courses, because I have always lacked skill in things such as pencil drawing. Even today, my students tease me about what a terrible artist I am.

“But when I was in 6th grade, the school librarian taught an after school program on making stop motion Claymation using a Super 8 camera. This was brand new technology at the time, and I remember thinking it was pretty cool. It introduced me to a creative process that I could get excited about.

“Creating art using stop-motion animation is still an important process for me, it’s a major component of what I teach, and in fact I am working on setting up a full Claymation production studio at my school, which we hope to have up and running within the next three years.”

Gregg’s love of creative education not only shaped his own story, but is now fueling his passion for his own students and their future successes.

When asked how Adobe Youth Voices has impacted his students, Gregg shared that bringing current technology into the classroom provides students with a new way to express themselves while learning how to use new tools and resources that will benefit them both in and out of the classroom. Adobe Youth Voices gives students competitive skills that they can take to the marketplace in the future for a job in graphic design or video editing.

“In my 15 years of teaching,” says Gregg, “I have seen other programs and initiatives come and go, but the Adobe Youth Voices curriculum of ‘create with purpose’ is the foundation for my digital media classes and will continue to be so for the remainder of my career.”

What does Gregg love about his work with Adobe Youth Voices? Near the top of his list is the opportunity to see young people develop a passion for something, especially if it is something they didn’t even realize they enjoyed prior to his class. “My students are at-risk youth; they are good, kind-hearted kids who perhaps made the wrong decisions academically or in their extracurricular life, and who got off track. Now they are looking to reinvest in their education, and they are striving for greatness.”

Want to see first hand the work Gregg and his students have created? Check out this trailer of student work created in Gregg’s Adobe Youth Voices classroom!

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Guy Kawasaki's guide to creating a financial forecast in Excel

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You've finished your business plan and polished the pitch for investors. As an entrepreneur you know what comes next:  number-crunching. To clinch funding, you need a financial projection that shows investors the path to profitability.The Office Web Apps team worked with @Guy Kawasaki to provide a no-nonsense guide to presenting the kind of financial forecasts and plans in Excel that impress any VC or investor. Read it on Guy's blog or get it direct from his SkyDrive for free. (Already an Excel geek? You'll want to download it and take a look at what's under the hood.)

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How: creating a watermark (video)

Watermarks can be used in Word and Publisher to ("printed") or images (logos) either online or in printed form in documents stamp words.Let me show you how it is done in this short video.

See more about watermark on Office.com and read this blog post about the use of photos as a watermark.

--Doug Thomas

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Photoshop tutorial - create a glass ORB (quick method)

Create a glass ORB (quick method)

Copyright 2004 Ugur AKINCI, PhD. (www.writer111.com)

1.

You create a new Photoshop document of 4 "X 4" in size, select file > new. Select to make the radio button "Transparent" for "Content", transparent to the background. Make sure that the "mode" "RGB color" is. Then click OK.

2.

Select the elliptical marquee tool (M) and draw a circle while you press the SHIFT key. The circle should appear "walking ants" around its perimeter.

3.

Select a non-white foreground color. I choose red for this exercise.

4.

Fill the selected circle, with the foreground color via Edit > fill > foreground color.

5.

Select the move tool (V) (arrow with Black Lace).

6.

Duplicate the background layer of access it and then click the icon "Create a new level" at the bottom of the layers list auseinandergezogen.

7.

Select the background layer and lock by clicking on layer check box locks at the top.

8.

Select the background copy layer. With the right mouse button, and select from the pop-up menu layer properties. You change the name of the level to "ORB base".

9.

While the ORB base layer is selected, click the icon "Add a layer style" at the bottom of the layers list. Select from the popup list "Inner Glow."

10.

Layer style in the dialog box that displays, select the following settings:

Blend mode: normal.

Opacity: 75 %

Color: Choose a dark color close to black.

Size: to 100-150, according to taste.

11.

Then click OK.

12.

Click CTRL + D, the selection disable district (the "marching ants").

13.

Create a new layer at the top by clicking on the icon "Create a new level" at the bottom of the layers list.

14.

You select the elliptical marquee tool (M) and draw an ellipse in the direction to the top of your circle sphere.

15.

In the tool box, click the icon of default background foreground colors to shift the color back to black and white.

16.

Click on the color-switching double-headed arrow make white the foreground color.

17.

Select the gradient tool (G).

18.

Select from the properties bar above your screen white to transparent gradient (second from top left).

19.

While the top layer is still selected, click and drag to the course from the top down on your ball create a white to transparent gradient.

20.

Select the move tool (V) (arrow with Black Lace).

21.

Click on CTRL + T to the free transform function select.

22.

Reshape by dragging on the corners of the place transform your history to something like this:

23.

Press ENTER to register the new form. Click CTRL + D, the selection disable district (the "marching ants").

24.

And you have your "Glass ball".

Place BONUS steps - how an object within the glass ORB?

1.

While still in Photoshop, open image file that you want to. Let us say that we use the photo of a u-Bahn train...

(Visit http://writer111.googlepages.com/creatingaglassorb-photoshoptutorial for the screenshots, that with this tutorial.)

2.

Make sure that you have selected the move tool (V) (arrow with Black Lace).

3.

Click on the photo and drag it over your glass ORB window. This will import the new image, by you automatically create a new layer at the top. We take the new photo is simply too large and it must be changed.

4.

While new level is still selected, click CTRL + T to the free transform function select.

5.

You will see the selection of space around the image.

6.

On the top bar of the properties, type a corresponding percentage ("50" say) for the width (B). Click the chain icon to ensure that the height (H) by the same percentage as also be reduced. When completing the square image completely covers the glass ORB.

7.

Press the Enter key, the scaling is complete. Click CTRL + D, the selection disable district (the "marching ants").

8.

Select the elliptical marquee tool (M) and draw a circle while you press the SHIFT key. The circle should appear "walking ants" around its perimeter.

9.

Center of the selected circle of your square image.

10.

Press CTRL + SHIFT + I to inverse the selection.

11.

Press Delete to delete corners of the square.

12.

Click CTRL + D, the selection disable district (the "marching ants").

13.

Make sure that you have selected the move tool (V) (arrow with Black Lace).

14.

Center your round image on your glass ORB.

15.

Click on the arrow down right next to the "Blending modes" which in the levels box (shown in the "Normal" by default).

16.

Select "Overlay" and bingo! Your image is captured within the glass ORB.

Feel free with other blending modes and opacity settings experiment.

For example, "Difference" blend mode and 50%, try opacity.

Your imagination is your limit. Enjoy!

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Ugur AKINCI is a writer with 20 years of experience. Visit his website http://www.writer111.com for more information.