Using Office Visio 2007, create professional-looking diagrams that communicate a wealth of information you can share with a broad audience. View larger.

Two Stand-Alone Editions
Visio 2007 is available in two stand-alone editions: Office Visio Professional and Office Visio Standard. Visio Standard 2007 has the same basic functionality as Visio Professional 2007 and includes a subset of its features and templates. Visio Professional 2007 offers advanced functionality, such as data connectivity and visualization features, that Visio Standard 2007 does not.

Quickly Find and Use New Templates
Visio 2007 includes specific tools to support the diverse diagramming needs of IT and business professionals and lets you create a broader range of diagrams with new templates, such as the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) template and the Value Stream Mapping template. Use the predefined Microsoft SmartShapes symbols and powerful search capabilities to locate the right shape, whether it is saved on a computer or on the Web. You can also save time by quickly accessing templates you use often. In the new Getting Started window, find the template you need by browsing simplified template categories and using large template previews. Locate the templates you used recently by using the new Recent Templates view in the Getting Started window.

Get Inspired by Sample Diagrams
If you're not sure how to best display your important data, Visio 2007 can help by making it easy to find new sample diagrams. Simply open the new Getting Started window and use the new Samples category. View sample diagrams that are integrated with data to get ideas for creating your own diagrams, to realize how data provides more context for many diagram types, and to determine which template you want to use.

Display Data Attractively in Diagrams
The Data Graphics feature lets you display data attractively in diagrams, and you can choose from a number of data formatting options. With a single click, display data fields as callouts next to a shape, position fields in boxes below a shape, and place fields of data directly on top or to the side of a shape. You also have the option of easily refreshing data in diagrams, thanks to the new Refresh Data feature. If data conflicts arise, easily resolve them by using the Refresh Conflicts task pane.

Connect Shapes Without Drawing Connectors
You don't have to be a professional graphic designer to build interesting diagrams--Visio 2007 gives you the tools to connect shapes without drawing connectors. The new AutoConnect functionality connects shapes, distributes them evenly, and aligns them for you--all with only one click. In fact, when you move the connected shapes, they stay connected and the connectors automatically reroute between the shapes.

Use the wide range of diagram types in Office Visio 2007 to better understand complex processes, resources, and systems. View larger.

Reach a Broader Audience The Theme feature in Visio 2007 makes it easy to format the colors and effects (text, line, fill, shadow, and connector formatting) in an entire diagram with a single click. It even uses the same color palette as other 2007 Microsoft Office system programs so that you can design professional-looking Visio diagrams that match your presentations and documents. New 3-D Workflow shapes, which were designed with the new Theme feature in mind, command attention, while the option to save in PDF or XPS file format can help you reach a broader audience. You can even view Visio diagram attachments from within Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

Automatically Connect Diagrams to Data Sources
With the new Data Link functionality, Visio 2007 gives you the option of automatically connecting diagrams to data sources, such as Excel 2007 spreadsheets or Access 2007 databases. You can also save time associating data with shapes by using intuitive new linking methods, which populate each shapes' properties (also known as shape data) with data values. For example, you can link all the shapes in a diagram to rows of data from connected data sources by using the new Automatic Link Wizard.

Effectively Track Reports
Visio 2007 also gives you the flexibility to generate reports directly from within Microsoft Office Project and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server that track project tasks, owners, roles, responsibilities, and depict complex project ownership structures. And it's no problem to add new details as they become available because Visio 2007 automatically modify the reports as project information changes.

Using Office Visio Professional 2007, visually explore data by using diagrams to identify issues and exceptions. View larger.

Easy Collaboration
With the Track Markup feature, multiple people can collaborate on the same Visio diagram. Generally used for reviewing a diagram and incorporating feedback, Track Markup helps make each reviewer's contributions clear to other reviewers and to the person who eventually incorporates the revisions in the diagram.

Customize and Extend Visio 2007
You have the option of extending Visio 2007 programmatically or by integrating it with other applications to fit your industry-specific scenarios or unique organizational requirements. Visualize custom solutions with Visio 2007 diagrams, such as Unified Modeling Language (UML), data flow, and Microsoft Windows user interface diagrams, by using templates in the Software and Database category. The Visio 2007 software development kit (SDK) includes extensive samples, tools, and documentation to simplify and speed up development of custom applications. The SDK provides a set of reusable functions, classes, and procedures for the most common Office Visio 2007 development tasks and includes support for a broad range of development languages, including Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Visual C# .NET, and Microsoft Visual C++.

Visio Drawing Control
Using the Visio Drawing Control, developers can embed and program the Visio drawing environment in custom applications. This opens up new opportunities for solution integration, making it easy to include the power of Visio 2007 in any smart client application. Because the Visio Drawing Control can be integrated with the host application's UI, developers can take advantage of Visio drawing functionality as a smooth part of their application without having to develop similar functionality themselves. In addition, you can control several new features in Visio 2007 programmatically, including connecting to a data source, linking shapes to data, displaying linked data graphically, connecting shapes to one another automatically (AutoConnect), monitoring and filtering mouse-drag actions, and applying theme colors and theme effects. Each of these features has an associated application programming interface (API) that makes it possible to control the feature programmatically and new objects and members associated with it in the Visio object model.

Thanks to all these options, Visio 2007 gives you the power to revolutionize the way you present information to colleagues and clients, which can positively affect productivity and your bottom line.