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How to use the Visio tile

Documentation Team
  • Updated

How to use the Visio tile

The Visio tile enables you to transform Microsoft Visio diagrams into live HTML5 dashboards showing real time SCOM health state.

How does the Visio tile work?

Microsoft Visio Professional enables you to attach custom data to any shape. Data can be imported from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a database connection, or data can be entered manually within Visio itself. You may already use this feature to attach server details (for example, name and IP address) to your application topology views.

Note: Microsoft Visio Professional allows you to add data to diagrams whereas Microsoft Visio Standard does not.

To make a Visio diagram ready to use in Dashboard Server, you simply have to add a ScomId field, and set the value of this field to the ID of a SCOM object. There are a number of different ways to find the IDs of SCOM objects, but in Dashboard Server we have made it very simple with the scope export button.

How many Visio diagrams can I display per dashboard?

The Visio tile only supports one diagram per dashboard because of the way SVG files are created by Visio. You can display more than one Visio diagram on the same dashboard by creating two separate dashboards each containing one Visio diagram, then using the Web Content tile to embed the second dashboard in the first dashboard. Tip: You can append ?display=embed to the end of the website URL to hide the navigation bar and page title on the embedded dashboard.

See How to use the Web Content tile.

How to configure a Visio tile

  1. Get the SCOM data of the objects you want to monitor with your Visio diagram.

    There are three types of SCOM data fields that Dashboard Server can use in the Visio tile:

    scomId

    Required. The ID of an object in SCOM

    scomName

    Optional. The Name of an object in SCOM (Display Name).

    scomPath

    Optional. The path for hosted objects like disks and databases.

    The Visio tile itself doesn't have a Scope panel, which is why you need to use a different tile to select and export the scope.

    1. In Dashboard Server, create a new Status tile on a dashboard, select any of the visualizations like Icons and open the Scope panel.

    2. Configure the scope to show the objects whose health you want to show in your Visio diagram.

    3. Click the export button and your browser will download an Excel spreadsheet containing the basic details of each object: Display Name, Path and ID.

    4. Open the spreadsheet to verify the contents, ensuring the correct data has been exported.

      Note: For non-hosted objects like servers the Path will be blank, but Path will be important for hosted objects like disks and databases.

    If you already have a CMDB or some other data source for your Visio diagrams, you may want to add your SCOM data from this data source. This is an advanced topic and we would advise that you only choose this method if you are already familiar with importing shape data into Visio.

    Tip: You can also use the Export scope function to export to Excel and import into your CMDB.

    Querying the SCOM Data Warehouse to get SCOM data

    1. The object details are available in the vManagedEntity view, so a simple query like the following will extract all the server IDs (we're using FullName to filter to all Microsoft.Windows.Computer instances):

      Copy
      SELECT
           [ManagedEntityGuid] as ScomId
          ,[Path] as ScomPath
          ,[DisplayName] as ScomName
      FROM [OperationsManagerDW].[dbo].[vManagedEntity]
      WHERE [FullName] LIKE 'Microsoft.Windows.Computer:%'

    2. Once the SCOM data is added to your existing data source, all you will need to do is open your existing Visio diagrams and refresh the data connection.

    You can download a diagram view of your objects from SCOM in Visio format (.VDX) with the Export page to Visio VDX function.

    Open the diagram in Visio and continue with the steps below.

    The IDs of SCOM objects can be found in a number of different ways. Tao Yang blogged about this, so his blog is a great starting point (thanks Tao!): Various Ways to Find the ID of a Monitoring Object in SCOM

  2. Attach the SCOM data to shapes in Visio and create an SVG.

    SVG is the web standard for drawing vector graphics. It is part of the HTML5 specification and supported on all modern browsers. Visio files can be exported as SVG to create web-ready versions of your diagrams. Like Visio files, SVG files define the drawing as lines and shapes (instead of pixels), so the drawing can scaled to any size without any loss of quality. SVG files have the *.svg extension and when opened in a text editor you will see that it is just XML.

    1. In Visio, open the Visio diagram you want to use.

    2. Attach the SCOM data to your shapes by adding at least one field labeled scomId to them and filling this field with the value of the SCOM ID of the object you want to monitor.

      Note if you used the Dashboard Server to Excel export: Import the Excel file so that its column headers will be used as the data label. Depending on your Visio version, this might be called Data > Custom Import or Link Data to Shapes.

      Note: Take care that shapes are not grouped together. This can cause confusion as data can get linked to several shapes at once.

    3. Save the Visio diagram as a SVG Scalable Vector Graphics (*.svg)

  3. Use the SVG in the Visio tile.

    1. In Dashboard Server, create a Visio tile on a dashboard or perspective.

    2. In the SVG upload panel and drop your SVG file in the upload box.

      The diagram is uploaded to the SquaredUp server, rendered in the dashboard, and health icons are overlayed.

    3. In the Behavior panel you can change how the SVG file is displayed.

      Mode

      You can choose between icons (health status icons) and color (replaces colors on the shape with the health state color).

      Icons:

      Icons are a familiar way of visualising health state and are typically used for application and network topology diagrams. Dashboard Server draws a health state icon for each shape that is linked to a SCOM object in your Visio diagram (using the scomId data field).

      Color:

      Color replace is a great way to create high impact dashboards with clearly visible health state. This is perfect for NOC-style dashboards shown on a large screen, but can also be used for standard topology diagrams.

      Dashboard Server detects which colors are used in the shapes that are linked to a SCOM object in your Visio diagram (using the scomId data field). By default, Dashboard Server will replace all colors, or you can choose a specific color using the color picker. Dashboard Server will replace the chosen color with red, amber, green or gray, depending on the health state of the SCOM object.

      Color to replace (only for colors)

      The Visio tile makes it easy to experiment with color replace to find the settings that give the best results.  You can choose to replace single or multiple colors, and click on one or more of the colors displayed to give the required effect.

      Position (only for icons)

      By default the icon is drawn in the center of the shape, the position options allow you to change it to top, middle or bottom and left, center or right.

      Size (only for icons)

      Drag the slider to change the icon size.

  4. Click done to save the tile.

    The tile now shows data according to your settings.

Tips and Frequently Asked Questions

The Visio tile only supports one diagram per dashboard because of the way SVG files are created by Visio. You can display more than one Visio diagram on the same dashboard by creating two separate dashboards each containing one Visio diagram, then using the Web Content tile to embed the second dashboard in the first dashboard. Tip: You can append ?display=embed to the end of the website URL to hide the navigation bar and page title on the embedded dashboard.

You can add hyperlinks in Visio that then work in Dashboard Server. Simply right-click on an object in Visio and add a hyperlink, to a SquaredUp dashboard, or any web page.

SVG maps for non-commercial use can be found here: http://www.amcharts.com/svg-maps/

Take care to ungroup the shapes in Visio before linking the SCOM IDs: