Did you know that Visio can now be a core tool in your workflow arsenal?  Visio can not only deliver functionality to help your business analysts participate in workflow modeling.  But can also help deliver the status of your workflow when running in a visual manner.  This topic may take a few different blog posts, especially if we want to cover some of the finer points of how Visio fits into your workflow plans. 

Lets get started talking Visio workflow, with one of the more visible pieces of the Visio story being workflow visualization with Visio Services.

The below screen shot shows a visual representation of a basic out of the box publishing workflow, as shown through Visio services.

This easily allows you to see not only what step the workflow is on currently, and what it has been through but also what is to come.  Visio visualization of workflow is available on all workflows published from SharePoint Designer, but has to be “enabled” see below

There are many aspect of how you may use Visio as part of you workflow/SharePoint strategy, too many to cover here. So lets just cover a few items that may help you in your planning.

Training will be a very step in your path to SharePoint and workflow success.  When rolling out Visio as a tool you will need to ensure that all those who will participate are fully trained. 

 
First step Familiarity with the stencils

When utilizing Visio as a workflow modeling tool you have to ensure those involved use the template provided as all workflow must be modeled using the SharePoint Process modeler stencils

Each stencil visual represents actions and outcomes similar to those found in SharePoint designer

Once you familiarize your workflow modelers with the different components of this stencil you need to make sure they understand how they will be expected to model their processes.    Your typical business analyst/user will more than likely think of a process laid out like this

Unfortunately this is not possible in Visio specifically because of the “loop back” or “re-work” step.  You can model it this way but it will not allow you to export it.  (You will receive an error) 

Instead what you have to do is build out your processes linearly. As seen below.

You may not be able to completely grasp the idea behind this diagram, but this diagram is the Visio representation of the typical business process shown earlier, only in a linear fashion where the rework is a complete branch.  When you build out a process that may require “re-work” or loops you have to flatten them out and more or less duplicate a branch.  This can take some time and of course practice to figure out.  Check out the below video that attempts to explain it better.

Another good Visio and workflow resource can be found here

http://blogs.msdn.com/visio/archive/2009/11/23/sharepoint-workflow-authoring-in-visio-premium-2010-part-1.aspx

Have you played with Visio 2010 and workflow?  What was your experience? How do you see it fitting in?