RE: Help! Looking for advice on a Visio template issue!

[Lin Laurie <linlaurie1 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Thanks. Thatâs just what we did today. It turned out that various equipment vendors used a company called VisioCafe.com to distribute their shapes. So, since they all go to one site to get them, we felt better about that. I just designed a template that had a shell with the logo, name, and other pertinent details and let them get their equipment diagrams and other shapes from that site. Everyone was happy and it was less work for me. I love doing Word templates, but this pushed beyond my Visio template knowledge. I got to develop my skills but also got to go back to what Iâm more interested in.

Thanks for your help!

I donât often ask for it, but I do love having this community to ask. Iâve been a âmemberâ since 1987 or so and recall two ways to upset tech writers: Ask about serial commas and if they use 1 or 2 spaces after a period. I know there are still some of us around with thoughts on those subjects. LOL

Lin Laurie

From: Nina Barzgaran <nina -dot- barzgaran -at- barzgaran -dot- at>
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2022 9:10 PM
To: Lin Laurie <linlaurie1 -at- hotmail -dot- com>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Help! Looking for advice on a Visio template issue!


Hello Lin,

the principle is not uncommon the way you are outlining this... Share files and folders securely in a company network. I am not an expert on Visio technology as far as using templates as .zip-files goes.
Used it, had some training even, but it's been a while.

If I get it correctly, you want to prepare consistently styled templates and they should be available from various devices inside the same company network?
Since they did it similarly before, using 'any old template' online, my basic understanding and thinking is:
You would want to get back to their IT infrastructure team, and together with the engineers / stakeholders of that endeavour, figure out how to share those consistent templates with whom, securely.
As some random examples, a company cloud service comes to mind (if available), even the company intranet, whichever they are using, network drives used via VPN, etc...

All the best
Nina



Am 16.09.2022 18:04, schrieb Lin Laurie:
Hi all,

I am working with a client who uses a variety of network equipment. I'm creating Visio templates that are preloaded with recommended shapes ready to use. Because our network engineers use Visio to diagram network connections to various equipment, they've told me that the canned shapes don't work for their needs. In the past, they've gone online and used different sites (depending on the equipment vendor) and downloaded templates to address their needs.
The person leading this discussion on behalf of the engineers has just gone wherever he wanted to and thought he'd use the templates for branding and other page information.
My job is to bring standardization and consistency to the company by creating templates. We didn't want to download the current equipment templates because they get out of date. The other concerns are:

  *   Could they be downloading viruses in the template zip files?
  *   Is there a better way to handle this, like going directly to a vendor's site?
  *   What do other companies do?

In the past, I've mostly worked with process flow diagrams directly and given the network engineers the templates, but I don't know what they do with them once they get them. However, I've worked at some highly security-conscious companies (like Intuit (TurboTax) and a couple of medical labs, all which have high security due to the personal and financial data they keep. My current company isn't quite as secure as that, although they are trying but coming from behind.
I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to handle this. I appreciate all suggestions.
Please direct responses to me in addition to the list.
Thanks!
Lin Laurie
206.900.1861


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