Printing Web Org Charts

[EagleUK]

Hi,

My organization is using Visio 2003 to produce Org Charts, which are saved
as web pages and posted on the Intranet.

Users are complaining because there is no consistent way to print them.
Using the browser print function is pretty much useless. It is possible to
resize the browser for optimum fit, right-click the image, and select Print,
but even this is hit or miss.

What I would like to do is add a Print function to the template so that
every page has a print button that works, and will optimize the page for
printout. Is this sort of thing possible? If anyone has any advice, please
let me know.

Thanks in advance...

 

[David Parker]

If your organisation has .Net Framework 3 installed, then you can export
your Visio file to XPS, and provide that for viewing and printing.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964988.aspx

Alterntaively, if you have a PDF writer, then you could provide a link to a
PDF version of the files for printing because most companies have PDF
readers installed.

 

[EagleUK]

Thanks, David.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Saving the charts as PDF or XPS (or
JPG, etc..) would certainly work, but doesn't provide the web application
that the Visio Org Chart wizard builds, which includes a lookup service. It's
a shame that they put so much work into providing a really handy application,
but apparently just didn't think about printing.

I have been able to modify the generated pages to provide a Print section in
the menu that will print the charts, but the sizing and orientation are still
a problem. I'm sure that I can fix this too, but am not convinced this is
worth the effort. I would have to manually update the code every time the
wizard was run, which is every time a person is added or deleted.

The are other applications available that do this sort of thing, so I will
check them out before doing any more coding. OrgPlus is one of the leading
packages. I recall running this back in the MS-DOS days, so they should have
the bugs worked out by now.

Thanks again for your help.

Steve

 

[Chris Roth [Visio MVP]]

Steve, David,

Under File > Save As Web Page > Publish > Advanced tab, there are two
fields for specifying "Host in web page" and "Style sheet".

I've always wondered if these could be used to create custom exports -
perhaps even with the smarter print functionality that Steve needs?

I've just never had the time to explore this, and I'm not a CSS/HTML
expert (...yet)

--
Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP


Visio Guy: Smart Graphics for Visual People

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[Steve]

Hi Chris,

Sorry, I lost the thread on this and just rediscovered it.

Sure enough, I was able to create a customized web page with the print
function in javascript, and that is now working. I found that the graphics
sizes were inconsistent though and had to create a couple of workarounds for
that. First, I put a page border on the Org Chart pages so that all of the
graphics are exported at the same size, and then I added a popup to warn the
user to set their browser page setup to Landscape. This can't be done
through javascript unfortunately. I'm now in the process of creating a Visio
Add-On that will automate all of this for the user. The idea is that they
will select the Add-On, and it will customaize everything and post the files
to the web server.