Visio Guy

If you are an Exchange administrator, you might have worked with Exchange Management tools. And while you might enjoy the power and flexibility of these tools, you might be missing the ability to get a graphical overview of user mailbox details.

Now, I'm not an Exchange administrator, but I get the feeling that this thing is probably pretty cool for those of you who are...

According to Microsoft, and people who actually understand this stuff:

This add-In makes it easy for Exchange administrators to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. Instead of viewing single user data, administrators can create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data at a glance and dramatically increase productivity. You can diagram a Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 site topology, including sites, servers, and connections for an organization.

On the download page, they keep going on about Visio 2007 Professional, but I don't see in the software requirements that you have to have Pro.

<speculation>
It may be that the add-in will theoretically work with Pro or Standard, but only Pro has the shapes that the add-in needs.
</speculation>

The installation adds a new menu item to your main Visio window called ExMap:

Just click on the Exchange Map sub-menu and the add-in will take over from there, guiding you through more options than you can shake a CAT5 cable at:

This is where I stopped, deciding not to install a Virtual PC with all the required software, yada, yada, yada. Sso I'll leave it to you to read more about the Exchange Server Add-in, which you can do on Visio Toolbox here. And can find out how to actually run, configure and use it in this Word document.

You can download the tool here: Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Pro - Exchange Server Add-In

Interestingly, down at the bottom of Microsoft's download page, I noticed quite a list of "What Other's Are Downloading."

Evidently, Microsoft have been quite busy creating add-ins and connectors for Visio, and I should probably do some research and write another article or two!

Have a look at some of these offerings(!)

• Microsoft Office Visio Stencil Containing Shapes for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional Add-In for Rack Server Virtualization (Virtual Rack)
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional SQL Server Add-In
• Office Communications Server 2007 Visio stencil
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Pro - Storage Management for Servers (NRTM) Add-In