Although you can manually create the org chart using different shapes in the Shapes pane, Visio also provides an automated way of importing information about your organization from an external source. In this chapter, we will look into importing data from information in an Excel spreadsheet.
Generate an organization chart from employee data in Excel, an Exchange Server. Visio will generate this sample text file for you – start the Organization Chart Wizard. The Organization Chart templates add an Org Chart tab to the ribbon.
Creating Information in an Excel Spreadsheet
Create an Excel spreadsheet or use an existing one containing some of the important information in the header row that goes into creating an org chart. Important information includes Employee, Title, Manager and Department. The Employee and Manager fields are mandatory and the others are optional.
Additionally, you can also include a field called the Master_Shape, which indicates the exact shape to be used for a particular employee. Note that the name, Master_Shape field needs to be used as is for Visio to designate a specific shape to the employee.
Starting the Organization Chart Wizard
There are two ways of starting the Organization Chart wizard. The first method involves using the Organization Chart Wizard from the Templates section in the New menu.
The other method is to use the Import command in the Organization Data section from the Org Chart tab in the Ribbon, if you have already created an org chart.
The second method is recommended if you need the background formatting to carry over onto all the pages in the org chart. The first method creates all the pages required, but you need to individually format each page, which can get tedious if your organization is large.
Either ways, the Organization Chart Wizard appears in which you can specify the features of your org chart.
Using the Organization Chart Wizard
The first screen of the Organization Chart Wizard gives the option of either selecting the existing information from a file or manually entering information. For this example, we will choose the first option. Click Next to proceed to the next screen in the wizard.
In the following screen, you can choose the source in which the organizational information is stored. It could be a location on a Microsoft Exchange Server, a local text, CSV or Excel file, or an ODBC-compliant data source. Select the second option and click Next.
Now, enter the location or path to the Excel file and click Next.
In this screen, in the Name field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that contains the name of the employee. In the Reports to field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that denotes the reporting manager. If the name and first names are in different fields, specify the field containing the first name of the employee in the First name dropdown.
Visio will combine the name and first name fields to generate the full name of the employee. Click Next to continue.
The Data File Columns box lists all the data fields that are present in the header of the Excel file. You can select the fields that you need to be displayed in the Displayed Fields section by selecting the required fields and then click Add. Click Next, once the desired fields are added.
In the next screen, you can choose the fields the shape data should be based on. The shape data fields will be similar to the fields selected in the previous step so in most cases, you can leave it as such. You can also add any additional fields if needed.
In the following screen, you can choose to include pictures of the employees. If you have labelled pictures in the same format as the employee names, you can point to the location of the folder containing pictures of all the employees. Or you can simply choose not to include any pictures.
Visio Organizational Chart Template
In this screen, you can choose how much of organization info can be displayed on one page, if there are many employees spanning many pages. You can also choose to allow Visio to automatically break the org chart across pages. Make sure that Hyperlink employee shapes across pages and Synchronize employee shapes across pages are selected. Click Finish to finally create the org chart.
After clicking Finish, Visio will start processing information from the Excel spreadsheet and create the org chart based on the parameters specified in the wizard. You will see a progress indicator showing the status of the creation.
With trying to manage a business these days, it’s very important to have an Organization Chart to keep everything manageable. Here we’ll show you how to build one in Visio 2010.
This Guest Article was written by our friends over at Office 2010 Club.
Need for Organization Charts
The need of creating Organization Charts are becoming indispensable these days, as companies start focusing on extensive hiring for far reach availability, increase in productivity and targeting diverse markets. Considering this rigorous change, creating an organization chart can help stakeholders in comprehending the ever growing organization structure & hierarchy with an ease. It shows the basic structure of organization along with defining the relationships between employees working in different departments.
Opportunely, Microsoft Visio 2010 offers an easy way to create Organization chart. As before now, orthodox ways of listing organization hierarchy have been used for defining the structure of departments along with communication possible including; horizontal and vertical communications. To transform these lists which defines organizational structure, into a detailed chart, Visio 2010 includes an add-in for importing Excel spreadsheet, which comes in handy for pulling out data from spreadsheet to create an organization chart.
Importantly, you don’t need to indulge yourself in maze of defining organizational hierarchies and chalking-out structure, as you just need to specify the column & row headers, along with data you need to import and it will automatically create out chart defining; organizational hierarchies with specified credentials of each employee, categorized in their corresponding departments.
Creating Organization Charts in Visio 2010
To start off with, we have created an Excel spreadsheet having fields, Name, Supervisor, Designation, Department and Phone. The Name field contains name of all the employees working in different departments, whereas Supervisor field contains name of supervisors or team leads. This field is vital for creating Organization Chart, as it defines the basic structure & hierarchy in chart.
Now launch Visio 2010, head over to View tab, under Add-Ons menu, from Business options, click Organization Chart Wizard.
This will start Organization Chart Wizard, in the first step, enable Information that’s already stored in a file or database option, and click Next.
As we are importing Excel sheet, select the second option for importing Excel spreadsheet.
Specify the Excel file path and click Next to continue.
In this step, you need to specify the fields which actually defines the structure of an organization. In our case, these are Name & Supervisor fields. After specifying fields, click Next to Proceed further.
As organization chart is primarily for showing the hierarchy of departments/employees working in organization along with how they are linked together, and who supervises whom. Considering this, in this step we will leave out Supervisor field, because it’s inclusion wouldn’t be necessary as Visio automatically chalks-out the basic structure defined in Excel sheet. Add the rest of the fields under Displayed fields category, and click Next.
Now choose the fields which you want to include in Organization Chart’s shapes and click Next.
This step is about breaking the chart into multiple pages, if you are dealing with 100+ employees, you may want to specify numbers of pages on which Organization Chart will be displayed. But in our case, we are dealing with much less amount of data, so we will enable I want the wizard to automatically break my organization chart across pages option. Specify the name you need to show on the top of the page. If you are having less than 20 hierarchies, enter the name of the highest ranked employee in organization and click Finish to end the wizard.
It will instantly create an Organization chart out of specified Excel spreadsheet. Highest ranked employee will be shown on top of the organization chart, supervising various employees from different departments. As shown below, his immediate subordinates further manages other employees and so on.
For advance customizations, head over to Org Chart tab, here you will find different groups for setting up the Org Chart’s hierarchy and manage other employees’ positions. Under Arrange group, shapes’ arrangements can be changed and it provides easy navigation through the chart. You can also change the type of the position and hide subordinates of selected employee.
Visio Organization Chart Template Downloads
From Picture group, you can insert a picture of the employees, departments, etc. From synchronization group, you have the option of creating a synced copy and expanding subordinates of selected employee. Under Organization Data group, you can change whole layout of Organization chart from Display Options including; shape display, show divider, enable/disable imported fields, change block position, and fill colors, etc.
If at any point of time, you need to insert new position or announce vacancy, Organization Chart stencil is always available on the left sidebar. Drag the desired Organization Chart shape into main diagram page, to maintain the structure integrity, i.e, for inserting subordinates for a specific employee, drag the position shape over the existing employee shape box.
For instance, We have added a consultant in organization, who is directly under CEO, for maintaining this, we have dragged the Consultant box and just dropped it over the CEO box to make the immediate subordinate position.
Adding details to new position is a cinch, just right-click new position box and click Properties.
This will open up Shape Data dialog, start filling in all the relevant information and click OK.
Here you can see the newly created position is easily populated with all the specified information. Now expanding an Organization Chart doesn’t require maintenance of long lists any more. Under Design tab, you can also try out different designs & layouts over organization chart to make it look more flamboyant and professional.
Conclusion
An Organization Chart is a great way of showing detailed organizational hierarchies; with defined credentials of employees, departments structure, new vacancies, newly hired employees, recently added departments, and importantly shows most convenient way of interaction between different departments & employees, etc.
READ NEXTVisio Organization Chart Template Download 2017
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