Microsoft Visio 2010 : Working with SharePoint - Working with Files in Document Libraries

One of the selling points of Microsoft Office is its great integration with SharePoint, and Visio is no exception. In Visio 2010, you don’t even have to go to SharePoint to work with documents in SharePoint document libraries.

Working with Files in Document Libraries

Let’s create a document, save it to a SharePoint document library, and look at revisions. For this exercise, you need to know the address of a SharePoint document library, and it should have versioning switched on. If versioning isn’t on for your library, some of the steps below won’t work, but you’ll get the picture if you follow along.

Saving and Editing Visio Documents in SharePoint

1.	Start with a new, blank drawing.
2.	Draw a rectangle near the top of the page and type SharePoint on it.
3.	Go to File, Save & Send, and click Save to SharePoint. The right side of the panel shows you any recent locations that you might have browsed to, plus a Browse For a Location button.
4.	Double-click Browse For a Location. The Save As dialog appears.
5.	In the File Name field, paste the address to your SharePoint site. For example, I have a SharePoint site on Microsoft Online. The address to the document library looks something like this: https://blahblahblahmicrosoftonlinecom-1.sharepoint.microsoftonline.com/SharedDocuments, (“blahblahblah” is the fictitious part of the address and would be your name or your company’s name). Paste the address into the File Name field and then press Enter. After a few moments, you should see a view of the document library, with a listing of any files that are in it.
6.	Type a name for your file, such as Ch10 SharePoint, and then click Save. After a few moments (depending on your connection speed), your document is magically saved to the cloud. Note the window title changes from Drawing1 to Ch10 SharePoint—another clue that your document has been saved. You have saved the document directly to SharePoint; you didn’t need to save it to your hard drive first and then upload it later.
7.	Now let’s experiment with check-out and versioning. Click File and go to the Info panel. Because this document is saved in SharePoint, you see two SharePoint-related buttons that aren’t normally on the Info panel: Check Out and View Version History. Click Check Out. SharePoint alerts you that it is saving a copy of the document to the SharePoint drafts folder so that you can edit the document offline. Click OK. The Check Out button turns into a Check In button, and red text tells you that this is now a Checked Out Document. Nobody else with access to the document library can make changes to this file as long as you have it checked out.
8.	Click Home to return to the drawing window.
9.	Give the rectangle a fill color—something gaudy like bright orange!
10.	Return to the Info panel and click Check In, Check In. In the Check In dialog, decide how you want to version the file and add a comment, such as Changed color to orange. Check the Keep the Document Checked Out After Checking In This Version box, as shown in Figure 1. Click OK to finish the check-in process. Figure 1. Checking in a file using the Info panel in Backstage. You can enter comments describing changes and decide whether the change represents a major or minor change.
11.	Return to the document and move the rectangle to the bottom of the page. Repeat the check-in process from step 10 adding an appropriate comment and keeping the document checked out.
12.	Return to the document and make the rectangle’s font size much bigger. Check in the document after commenting, but this time, don’t keep it checked out. The document is checked in, and the Check In button reverts to the Check Out button
13.	Click the View Version History button on the Info Panel. You see a dialog titled Versions Saved for Ch10 SharePoint.vsd, which shows a list of the modifications and check-ins that you just made. You can view older versions of the document, and even restore older states as the current state if you don’t like a modification that was made.