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Thanks for going into detail on this. Making shape content more accessible
is a long term goal of mine. When proposing new ideas and features internally, it is very helpful to have the "voice of the customer" to reinforce the need for something better. -- Mark Nelson Microsoft Corporation This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. "tlonski" wrote in message ... Hi all, Hopefully I'm doing this right. :-) JUSTIFICATION Stencils are a fundamental mechanism in Visio for organizing and managing shapes. Stencils identify a collection of related shapes. Yet there is no mechanism in Visio to search for a stencil. Shape search only works at the shape level. By default, shape search results are returned alphabetically. For a shape in the search results, there is no easy way to determine which stencil a shape belongs to unless the user has set the search shape options to group the results instead of alphabetize the results. Further, Visio's shape search searches locally and on the Web, yet provides poor visiblity to the user on where the search results came from. Since users are not always connected to the Internet (because they have dial-up from home, are mobile, etc.) it's important to make this easily apparent so users know when to make a local copy of a shape. A third weakness is that shape search is based on keywords, yet Visio does not make the keywords easily accessible. If I've found a shape that's close to what I want, I cannot look at its keywords. I can drag the shape to my drawing and use "Find Similar Shapes" but that requires extra steps and doesn't give me any way to control the search. ENHANCEMENTS -- Keep the current "Search for Shapes" implementation but also provide an "Advanced Shape Search" command. This approach would be similar to the capabilities in Outlook where a simple "Find a Contact" search is provided in the toolbar but an "Advanced Find..." is provided under the tools pull-down and on the pop-up context menu for Contacts. -- Provide the option in "Advanced Search Shape" to search both stencil and shape keywords. Search results can be either a stencil or a shape. -- A Keyword field already exists in the stencil properties. However, I don't think it has ever been used in the past. I can think of three possible solutions for backwards compatability: 1) provide an option to treat stencil/shape names as keywords, 2) provide an option to search by name rather than keyword, 3) provide a function to copy stencil names into the keywords field of the stencil properties. I've listed these solutions in order of my preference. -- Stencil properties are only accessible for user-created stencils. This isn't consistent and hides information on Visio-supplied stencils. Make Stencil properties always accessible, but read-only for Visio-supplied stencils. -- Shape Master properties are only accessible for user-created stencils and only when the stencil is being edited. This creates several unnecessary hurdles when a user wants to see the shape master properties. Move "Master Properties..." from the "Edit Master" sub-menu to the top level context menu. Make "Master Properties..." always accessible. Make it read-only for Visio-supplied stencils or stencils that are not being edited. This request and the previous one will make keywords more visible and accessible to the users and facilitate using this information in searches. -- Provide an easily visible indicator to show whether a search result (stencil or shape) is local or on the Web. -- When a search finds a stencil, allow the user to open the stencil. For stencils found on the Web, also allow the user to install the stencil locally. -- For shapes in a search result, provide a command in the shape's context menu to open the parent stencil, i.e. the stencil that contains the shape. Sorry this is so long, but I was trying to be complete. My understanding is that this can be voted on in the discussion group and Microsoft tries to implement suggestions based on the number of votes. Please vote for this if you like these enhancements. The original thread that generated this suggestion was "How install stencils for shapes found on web?" and was started on 11/17/2004. It's copied below to provide the background on the specific situation that led to the suggestions above. Have fun reading bottom up. :-) Thanks for reading this far. Tom Lonski ================================================== = I believe so. I'm using Outlook Express, so I don't get the fancy newsgroup features. You can also send e-mail to . -- Mark Nelson Microsoft Corporation This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. "tlonski" wrote in message ... Thanks for the help Mark. That's what I guessed but it's good to have it confirmed. How can I submit this as a Visio suggestion/product enhancement to Microsoft? Do I repost this thread as a "suggestion to Microsoft" instead of a "question"? "Mark Nelson [MS]" wrote: No, there's no great solution here. Most shapes in the same stencil have a keyword in common. That is especially true for content that is only available from the web. -- Mark Nelson Microsoft Corporation This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. "tlonski" wrote in message ... Hi Mark, You say "...you can save local copies of all the shapes in it." in your post, but that's my dilemma. How can I find all the shapes in a Web stencil when I can't see the stencil or download it? I understand how to save an individual shape that I've found on the Web to another stencil (thus making a local copy). Now that I've found one shape in a Web stencil, how do I find the other shapes in that Web stencil? As I wrote the paragraph above, it occured to me to try using Visio's shape search to look for the Web stencil. While using the full name (Business Process Modeling Notation Shapes (US units).VSS) didn't work, shortening it to "Business Process Modeling Notation" found 39 shapes. Voila! Is there a better way to find all the shapes that belong to a web stencil? I have several concerns about using shape search to find what's on a web stencil: #1 - Shape search is looking at the shape keywords. For this method to work, the stencil name must always be included as keywords on every shape in the stencil. It appears to have worked this time, but won't work in general. For example, if I search for "Blocks Raised", I get no results even though that is a stencil provided with Visio. Likewise, if I search for "UML", I get over 100 results from the eight UML stencils provided with Visio. #2 - Even when shapes are found using this method, there's no way of determining that you have all the shapes in the stencil. I found 39 shapes in the example above, but the stencil could have more shapes for all I know. #3 - I've used Visio for years. Aren't stencils a fundamental concept of Visio for organizing and managing shapes? Searching shape keywords to back into finding a stencil seems to violate Visio's conceptual principles (i.e. how Visio organizes itself and the logical model it presents to users so it appears consistent and is easier to use). So, while I may have stumbled on a workaround for this one instance, the general question remains "How can I find all the shapes that belong to a web stencil?" Thanks for the response. It helped me get closer to a solution. Regards. "Mark Nelson [MS]" wrote: This stencil is only available from the web. You cannot make the stencil local to my knowledge, but you can save local copies of all the shapes in it. Click on the icon next to your search term to save the results as a new stencil. Alternatively, right click on an individual shape and add it to My Shapes or another custom stencil. -- Mark Nelson Microsoft Corporation This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. "tlonski" wrote in message ... Hi, The general question is "When shape search finds shapes on the Web, how can you get the stencil and install it locally?" The specific situation is below. I have Visio Professional 2003 SP1 installed. I am working on process models and started with the Cross Functional Flowchart template. This template provides three stencils: Arrow Shapes, Basic Flowchart Shapes, and Cross Functional Flowchart Shapes. I need to show events in my process model. None of the three default stencils has this shape so I searched for it. In the Shape Search options (Tools - Options...) I have the search results sorted by group so I can see what stencil a shape belongs to. I like to see the original stencil because many times if the stencil has one shape I'm looking for, it has other shapes I need as well. When I search for an event shape, results are found from seven stencils. Six of the seven stencils are installed locally and are visible under File - Shapes. The seventh stencil is labeled "Business Process Modeling Notation Shapes (US units).VSS". Where is this stencil? The shape search looks locally and on the Web. This stencil is not installed in Visio (i.e. not visible under File - Shapes). I've searched Microsoft Office Online, my hard drive, and Googled it and I can't find this stencil. Help! Can anyone tell me how to find and install this stencil? Thanks in advance, Tom |
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