Microcorp Technology Blog

While searching for information regarding Facility Management (FM), we recently stumbled on a very interesting topic in FM Forum on MS Visio 2007 Facilities Management. In the discussion, one member described the process of using Visio is for a simple data population as for a more process-oriented, a dedicated package such as what Microcorp Technology represent which is ARCHIBUS is more appropriate for use.

Another member who happened to be a Microsoft USA personnel offered a free training session on Visio 2007 for Facility Managers. Topics for the training session include:

• Preparing CADD Documents for use in Microsoft Visio 2007 Professional Edition
• Importing the CADD Base Layer into Visio 2007
• Defining the allocated Spaces for Tracking all Mechanical Systems, Furnishings, IT Assets, and Human Resources
• Importing the Occupancy Data from an External Data Source
• Defining Visual Delineation through Visio Color-By-Value methodologies
• Assigning Imported Assets to Space Designators
• Utilizing Data Graphics to display key indicators on demand and provide multiple views into the assets
• Generating Reports and exporting Reports to tabular reporting tools such as Microsoft Office Excel 2007
• Generating Facilities Management Phased Implementations utilizing communication between Visio 2007 and Microsoft Office Project 2007 Professional Edition
• Generating Management Reporting via Visio 2007 Pivot Diagrams to hierarchally display Asset Management Structure
• Generating Web-based output views of the Facilities Management Asset Tracking for use by all stakeholders in the Enterprise

We will try and seek information for this training to see if it is available in our country (Malaysia). We did however fired up our Microsoft Visio 2007 and tried the ’space plan’ to see if we can utilize it for some of our facility management task. Check out the screenshot below:

Using MS Visio 2007 for FM

We only spent half an hour doing this sample and found out that utilizing Microsoft Visio 2007 is quite useful in FM. We could even save the project as a simple web page for web publishing:

Web Publishing MS Visio 2007 for FM

We realized that this tool is only good for small scale project so we are planning to elaborate our research to combine using this tool along with our main product, ARCHIBUS for a larger scale project. We’ll report on that once we’ve done with our test.