How to track changes in process maps

June 8th, 2006 (kb#99)

Some process mapping authors have a requirement to show brief comments about changes that have been made to process maps.

Below are some suggestions:

1. Using the track changes facility in Visio is useful but the limitation is that it does not publish to HTML with track changes on the viewable on the process maps.
2. You could use Comments - from the Visio menu, Insert > Comment.


These will appear as small rectangles that you would need to click to see the content.

Comments aren't included in the HTML export, which may be a problem, depending on whether your maps are checked from the original VDX files or from the HTML export.

3. Add text boxes to the map as follows:


i) In the Visio toolbar, click on the Text Tool (the button labelled 'A').

ii) Draw the text box by clicking and dragging a rectangle on the page.

iii) Add the text.

iv) In the Visio toolbar, click on the Pointer Tool (the button with an arrow cursor).

You could use Visio's layers to configure the visibility of these text box comments as follows:

i) In the Visio menu, View > Layer Properties...

ii) In the Layer Properties dialog, click on the New... button to create a new layer.

iii) In the New Layer dialog, name the layer 'Comments'.

iv) Click OK to close the New Layer dialog, and again to close the Layer Properties dialog.

v) Right-click on the text box > Format > Layer...

vi) In the Layer dialog, tick the Comments check box.

vii) Click OK to close the Layer dialog.

You can configure visibility, printing, etc. from the Layer Properties dialog (see above).