Microsoft has been running its Visio Online diagramming software in closed beta on the web. The company has also promised the service will come to Windows and Android. In the meantime, Visio Online has now been shifted to a public preview for the online version of the service. This follows a similar move to the iPad version a few weeks ago.
The company said it would bring the web version to public preview and has lived up to the promise. This release means users can now view and share their content directly in a browser.
Visio Online is a diagram tool that was first announced in 2015 in its 2016 iteration. The tool has been part of Microsoft’s service line up since 1992 and has been updated regularly since. It allows users to pull data from services like Azure Active Directory, Excel, and others with up-to-date templates. Customers can use the tool to create fast diagrams and visualizations.
On the web, users can view and share diagrams and link to web pages. A zoom function allows more detail in high fidelity and the search brings deeper sub-processes.
With the preview, users can use Visio Pro integrated in Office 365 to edit diagrams.
Visio Online Access
To use Visio Online on your browser, you will need to be an Office 365 business subscriber, using both SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. The following subscriptions give access to Visio:
- Office 365 Business Essentials
- Office 365 Business Premium
- Enterprise E1 Office 365
- Office 365 Government E1
- Enterprise K1 Office 365
- Office 365 Government K1
- OneDrive for Business Plan 1
- OneDrive for Business Plan 2
- SharePoint Online Plan 1
The Online version of the diagram service functions on Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. Microsoft says the full version will roll out to Office 365 commercial subscribers before the close of the year.
Last Updated on November 11, 2016 6:02 pm CET
Thanks for the comments, and the clarification from Keith. We have made it clear that I was referring to Visio Online.
Visio announced in 2015….? Pretty sure it’s been around a lot longer than that 😉
Is this the re-releasing of it as part of the core Office 365 suite, including the online version? Up until now you’ve had to license it separately and the latest versions of the desktop app have slowly lost functionality over the years.
If this is the new “modern” replacement and it comes to Office 365 under the usual subscriptions then that’s good news.
Hey Daniel, I believe the author left out the “Online” part in that statement. 🙂 The online version of Visio referenced is not a web-based Visio *editing* tool but rather a means for end users to quickly consume and interact with diagrams that have been previously created in the desktop Visio.
The previous version of this was the Visio Web Access web part in SharePoint, which was actually pretty powerful considering you can wire up JavaScript actions to the Visio object model and achieve a good degree of programmatic interactivity with the diagrams. The diagrams themselves would be rendered as image-mapped image files (JPG I believe).
This new version renders the diagrams as SVG which has a lot more flexibility.
In regards to Visio functionality, I’ve not seen a decline in functionality, in fact they just came out with an awesome preview of a feature which lets you generate BPMN and other diagrams, from Excel tabular data: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_officeinsider-mso_win10/announcing-smart-diagrams-from-visio-early-preview/0d32379d-a303-4805-8165-9b3bce6dc3d1?tm=1475762020368