MS Visio 2000

Here’s a tool to help you design your IT infrastructure,

document it, and keep it ready for all future updates. The latest version of

Visio Enterprise Edition has a lot of functionality ranging from network design

and documentation, database design and modeling, software application modeling,

and business process management. Because there are so many different features,

it takes some time to learn. You can get started with the basic functionality

without much trouble as it’s GUI-based with wizards and sample designs to

guide you through. The accompanying manual walks you through the various

components of Visio and explains how to work with them. You need a reasonably

powerful machine to work with Visio as it has to process so much data. We

installed it on a Celeron/366 NT server with 64 MB RAM and it was a little slow.

Visio 2000 comes in two CDs. The first of course contains

Visio itself, while the second one contains the standard drawings used by

various companies for their products. This has to be installed separately.

The best thing about the package is that it can automatically

discover your network structure. It has an AutoDiscovery wizard for doing this,

which takes you through a number of steps and comes out with a simple diagram

for your network. So you can discover your network devices through SNMP, or even

a simple ping. Another neat feature is that if you set it to rediscover, it’ll

only add the new devices it finds. This way, it doesn’t end up spending time

rediscovering devices from scratch. Some of the devices it finds include

printers, servers, hubs, switches, and routers. Unfortunately, we didn’t find

a separate option for PCs. It took them under the ‘others’ option. In the

reports, however, workstations were specified. Once the auto-discovery is

complete, you can generate reports to analyze them in a number of ways. For

example, you can view them by manufacturer, class, or simply an overall summary

of how many devices are there on your network.

Visio also let’s you also create data flow diagrams and UML

diagrams for your software development lifecycles. In case you’re setting up a

Website, then Visio can be used for conceptualizing how it looks. Or if you’re

not satisfied with the structure of your current Website, you can also generate

its maps or troubleshoot errors and missing hyperlinks.

Visio let’s you automatically import the sitemap for your

Website. By default, it selects the maximum number of levels to search as six

and sets the maximum number of links to discover as 500. You can also choose the

kind of pages to look for, such as HTML, ASP, image files, etc. You have to be

careful in choosing these settings, because if your Website is really big, the

site map will take a long time to generate. Plus, the final view in Visio will

be cumbersome to work with. That’s why it’s better to break up your site map

into multiple parts. Finally, after you have the site map, you can save it as a

HTML page. This page will retain all the links, so the moment you click on any

of the pages displayed in the site map, it’ll take you there. This can be

useful for improving your Website, and you can even put the site map itself on

to your Website.

Visio can also be used for project management. It let’s you

create PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) and Gantt charts to keep

track of your project progress and their deadlines. The software also let’s

you create geographical maps and simple directional maps with roads and railroad

tracks, etc. Interestingly, the geographical maps section didn’t have any maps

for Asian countries. You can also layout floor plans for your office building.

These are extremely easy to create, as you just have to drag-n-drop shapes such

as walls, rooms, tables, chairs, and even computers.

Another major plus of the package is that it let’s you

import any LDAP compliant directory structure, like NetWare’s NDS or Windows

2000’s Active Directory. You can also build a directory structure from

scratch. It provides all the basic templates and shapes like users, workgroups,

domains, etc, for doing this.

Visio has an extensive set of templates and shapes for

creating so many different types of diagrams. You can also create your own

shapes and add them to these sets. Another important feature in Visio is that it

let’s you work with databases. In this, you can build a database structure

from scratch with all the entity-relationship diagrams, or even import

structures from ODBC compliant ones and work on their structures.

There’s a lot more you can do with Visio, such as create

process flowcharts, block diagrams, organizational charts, etc. For the price,

it’s a great buy, and can really help an organization in keeping track of its

IT infrastructure.

Anil Chopra at PCQ Labs