Import data with the Org Chart Wizard

- When creating Org Charts here in Visio 2016, you can create them manually by clicking and dragging shapes out onto the page and creating your links like we've been doing in this chapter. Or if you already have the data, you can import that data. There's a couple of different ways to do it, that we'll explore in this movie. So you can close up anything you've been working on, Saving your changes if you like, until you arrive at this blank screen. And it's from here where we'll start the import. But, what are we importing? I just want to show it to you. You don't need to open this up. It's an Excel file, the Excel file is called Org Chart Data and you will find it in the Chapter 9 folder of your exercise files. I just want you to see how it is layed out. If you're going to do your own, there are certain rules that need to be applied. First of all, you need to have what's called a Header row. Notice Row 1 has column headings. This is our Header row. Our first column happens to be titled Employee. It could be Name, it could be something else, but we've chosen Employee. We also have their Title stored in this file. Then we have another column labeled Manager. Could be who they report to. Well, these are the two columns you must have, Employee and Manager columns. The others are totally optional. If you don't need them, don't add them. But in this case, our file has this information. The only two we really need are A and C. We also have Department information, and another one that's optional, which I kind of like, is Master_Shape. It's the only one that has to be named exactly the way you see it here, Master_Shape. If you want to assign specific shapes to Employees or Names, in this case, you can do it. And notice I haven't assigned a shape to every single person on this list, just the ones I want to differentiate. For example, David Rivers is the President and CEO. Sally Kerner, the CFO, reports to David Rivers. So does Suzanne Fine, the Executive Assistant, but I want her shape to be different from the CFO, and connected differently, that's why it's assigned as Assistant. These are the shape names that we see when we're creating an Org Chart. So, as we scroll a little further down, we know there's also a Consultant shape, and if we have any Consultants on this list, we can assign that shape to them from this column. So it's totally optional and it can be changed after the fact. But this can save you some time, just identifying who's an Assistant, a Consultant, and any other shape that needs to be specified. So, we need to have Columns A and C, the rest are optional, and Column E is the only one that has to be spelled out the way you see it, here in Cell E1. This is the file we're going to be importing, so it can't be open. We'll close up Excel, and return to Visio. Well, I mentioned there's a couple of different ways to import. One option is to go to File, then with New selected, go to the Categories, just in case you don't see it in the Featured list, go to Business, and it's from here where you'll find Organization Chart Wizard. When you click this, and you don't have to follow along with me here, because I'm going to cancel out of this, I'll tell you why in a moment. You choose your Units, click Create. You can see the Org Chart Wizard starts. In the background, an Org Chart file has started. Now we get to choose information that's already stored in a file or a database, we could create it ourselves, entering the data using the Wizard, but we already have that Excel file. So with that selected, we would click Next, choose the Type, it's a .txt file or Excel file, click Next, and now we get to Browse to that file. And we get to pick and choose what's going to appear in our Org Chart. Well, I'm going to click Cancel. I'll tell you why, we know that we have more employees than will fit on a single page. If we end up with a dozen pages, and we want them all formatted the same, we can apply the formatting to each individual page after the fact. Or, we can do the formatting first, and then import the data. That's what I'd prefer to do. So, we'll click File, Close, without Saving. And start from scratch again. But this time, go to File, and with New selected, we'll go to the Categories, Business, but instead of using the Wizard from here, we'll click Organization Chart, and click Create. So this gets our chart started, again, we start with a blank page. And we can format that page ahead of time, and then do the import, so all the new pages coming in will get that formatting. Let's go to Design, Backgrounds, we'll scroll down to the bottom, choose a cool one like this one here, Technique. Looks good, maybe choose a different color. Click the drop down for Variants, go to Colors, maybe Prominence would be better for Landon Hotels, we'll give that a click. And now we're ready to import the data. And all the new pages created will get this background by default. We don't have to do it after the fact. That's why we're going this route. So, back up to the Org Chart tab, and it's from here where you'll see Import in the Organization data group. Give that a click. Check it out, it's the same Org Chart Wizard we started a moment ago. But now we already have our formatting in the background. So, information that's already stored in a file, click Next, it is going to be an Excel file, so with that selected, we click Next. Browse to it by clicking the Browse button. It's in the Exercise files, Chapter 9 folder. There's Org Chart Data, with it selected, click Open. Now we can keep the language at English, and click Next. Now, from here, we get to pick and choose what's going to be included in our Org Chart. So, it takes a moment. Notice that we have a Name and Reports To field. So, we have to choose which columns apply to Name and Reports To. Remember, I said they didn't have to be named anything specific, but we do have to choose what the Name field is going to be, it's our Employee column. And the Reports To field is from our Manager column, already there. We don't have our First Names separated into their own column, so we'll leave that at None. And click Next. Now we get to choose what's going to be displayed. All we need is the Employee and Title, so if they're not already there, you just select them, and move them over. Let's click Next. Also, not just shape data, but what appears in the shape. Again, we want Employee and Title. If we wanted the Department, we could add it, but I don't think we want that, so with it selected, we click Remove. And click Next. All right, now pictures can be included, and if you have them all organized, and named exactly the same as the Employee or Name field, you could go and get that folder and include those, but we don't have any. We're not going to include pictures. So, with that selected, the default, we'll click Next. And now, do you want to specify how much of your organization gets displayed on each page? Or let the Wizard take care of it? I'm going to let the Wizard take care of this. And at the top of the first page is our Top Executive, but you can click the drop down, and actually choose a name. In my case, I'm the CEO, David Rivers, I can click that name, it's the same as the Top Executive. But, let's just leave it at Top Executive, so every page has their own Top Executive for that group. Hyperlink Employee shapes across pages, yes, that's important. And synchronize them across pages as well. Both of those should be checked off when you click Finish. And now it begins to import the data, based on our selections. You can see it all happening quickly. And there's up to 11 pages here. And each of these pages can be re-organized, if we wanted to, we could go to the Home tab here, and format things. But let's leave them the way they are, and just go to Page 1, to check out our first page. And you can see all the shapes that are included on the first page. Notice that every page here has the same background, something that would not have happened automatically. If we had gone through the Org Chart Wizard, we would have to assign the background to each of these pages. And each of the pages, we can change the paper size and so on, as we need to. Some of them are wider and taller than others. And by going to the Org Chart tab, we have all of those options for Best Fit to Page, for example, we could do that for any or all of our pages. But that's how we get the information that we already have imported into our file to create our Organization Chart.