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