I don’t know about you, but I’ve been working on a collaborative workspace with a colleague of mine and I had to do all my work on Microsoft Visio on my Windows PC. He was on a Mac. He didn’t have Visio and I did, so whenever I showed him my progress, he got frustrated since he couldn’t actually, well, collaborate with me.
Isn’t that the point of collaboration?
That’s why I’m pleased to see that Microsoft has recently announced the launch of Visio Online which answers the problems that I totally had just a few months ago. With Visio Online, users can share and view Visio diagrams in high quality using any device and their favorite browser. This has now launched to all Office 365 commercial users and has also been met with a release of JavaScript APIs for IT administrators to extend Visio capabilities to meet specific user needs.
How did we get here?
Microsoft has been working hard at giving users Visio enriched experiences. In November, Visio Online Public Preview was given to a group of Office 365 users. That has turned into Visio Online for VSD file format and for users on Exchange Online, Outlook.com, and Hotmail.
Visio JavaScript APIs
Visio JavaScript APIs extend the capabilities of Visio Online for developers to allow them to create mashup solutions that enable programmatic access to SharePoint and much more. For more on this feature, visit the Office Dev Center.
Photo Credit: Visio, Microsoft
You should try lucidchart. It’s actually built with full collaboration and full functionality into the browser so it stands completely browser agnostic.
Wayyyyyy better.