Visio Services overview (SharePoint Server 2010)

  • Article

 

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

Summary: Visio Services lets users share and view Visio Web drawings. It also enables data-connected Visio 2010 Web drawings to be refreshed and updated from various data sources. Visio Services runs as a SharePoint Server 2010 service application.

Use and benefits of Visio Services

Visio Web drawings (*.vdw files) can be rendered by Visio Services and viewed in a Web browser. This lets users view Visio documents without having Visio or the Visio Viewer installed on their local computer. Basic exploration and navigation of these rendered Web drawings are supported within the Visio Web Access Web Part. Page designers can configure the user interface and functionality of the Web Part.

Visio Services can also refresh the data and recalculate the visuals of a Visio Web drawing hosted on a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 site. This enables published Web drawings to refresh connections to various data sources and to update affected data graphics and text fields.

Visio Web drawings can be published to SharePoint Server 2010 using Microsoft Visio Professional 2010 and Microsoft Visio Premium 2010.

Data sources supported by Visio Services

Connections to the data sources listed here may be refreshed by using Visio Services if they were created by using Microsoft Office Visio 2007 or Visio 2010 data-link technology and published using Visio 2010 publishing functionality. Refresh of data through any other mechanism into a Visio Web drawing will not be supported.

  • SQL Server 7.0

  • SQL Server 2000

  • SQL Server 2005 (32- & 64-bit)

  • SQL Server 2008 (32- & 64-bit)

  • SQL Server 2008 R2 (32- & 64-bit)

  • Sheet information that is stored in Excel workbooks (.xlsx files) published from Microsoft Office Excel 2007 or Microsoft Excel 2010 hosted on the same SharePoint Server 2010 farm

  • SharePoint Server lists that are hosted on the same farm

  • OLE DB or ODBC

  • Custom Data Providers implemented as .NET Framework assemblies

    Note

    For more information about creating custom data providers, see Creating a Custom Data Provider with Visio Services (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=191029)

Published Visio drawings

Visio Web drawings (.vdw files) may be saved and published to SharePoint Server 2010 and shared with other users who do not have Visio 2010 or the Visio viewer installed on their computers, as Visio Services will render a .vdw format file natively in SharePoint Server 2010 as a Web page. .Vdw Web drawings can only be created by Microsoft Visio Professional 2010 or Microsoft Visio Premium 2010.

Standard Visio drawings (.vsd files) are not rendered by Visio Services and require Microsoft Visio to be viewed.

See Also

Concepts

Plan Visio Services deployment (SharePoint Server 2010)
Configure Visio Services for a BI test environment
Visio Services resources (SharePoint Server 2010)

Other Resources

Resource Center: What's New in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Resource Center: Business Intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010