What is Tech-ed?  It is a very big community event by Microsoft addressing the technology group and showcase the new products and its cool features.  It enables technology community to skill-up with upcoming industry trends, best practices and also provides platform to connect between people & build network.

I, along with my colleagues (Ashwani, Rahul, Raja, Anil, Mahantesh & Vivek) took responsibility of proctoring Hands-on Lab sessions on App Dev Platform.  Teched runs over 3 days and each day consists of 4 lab sessions.  There are two tracks namely, App Dev Platform and IT Pro Platform. 

What is handson lab?  There are sessions which are speaker based.  Handson are different where developers can try out the new products on the lab terminals.  The lab content usually are in a form of VPC / Hyperv image and have a structured manual.  Alongside, the lab proctor give them conceptual knowledge on product features, will guide devs to work with the lab contents and help them troubleshoot with obstacles, if any.  For some of the lab sessions like WPF, Visual Studio 2010, Web development etc. we had full occupancy of around 30+ participants per session.  Approximately, more than 250 devs were benefited by attending these sessions which spanned over 3 days of Tech-ed May 2009.

Behind the scene:  Preparations started a month before.  Lab contents are provided to us by Harish and Ravi (DPE team).  Thanks to Harish & Ravi for their guidance and support to help us in every stage in contributing better.  We met Harish to understand how things work and prepare a plan of action for us to kickstart.  Allotted sessions among us based on our expertise.  Cross-checked the lab contents and manuals.  Ready to go!

On the D-day:  Next day is our TechEd and the previous night, Ravi helped us in preparing lab environment, setting up base OS, copying lab contents into terminals and validating them.  As lab sessions run back to back, Ravi pre-planned to have two sets of machines.  As a lab session continue on Set A machines, we prepared Set B machines with contents for next session.  It was quite an amazing experiance for me to see things how they run in real-time to get it organized and ready for such a big event!

Feedbacks from the participants were amazing and very positive!  It was wonderful and another most successful Teched this year.  Am eagerly looking for the next year.

Our Tech-ed team:

Designing Visio Automation Solution

Overview & Scope

This document describes suggestive approach for designing solutions which involve office automation using Microsoft Visio.  Shared are the learning derived from successful delivery of Managed Solutions project – ‘ServiceMap’.  Scope of the document is not to cover on explaining design patterns, instead illustrates how applying relevant patterns help building effective solution.

Architecture & Framework

Technology evaluation

Microsoft Visio is diagramming and information visualization tool for modeling business and technical diagrams.  Visio provides drawing control tied with SDK for programming.  DotNet windows form application hosting Visio drawing control will provide canvas-like drawing surface.  Visio drawing functionalities can be implemented using Visio’s SDK which makes programming more API model driven and hence increases developer’s productivity.  Visio shapes has shape sheet which allows developer to add custom attributes to the shape.  Persisting custom attributes is achieved as and when the Visio document is saved.  Shape also have data linking facility by which external data source like share point list or database can be connected and data can be linked to the shape inside the drawing.  In-built shapes or user defined shapes can be created and added to Visio stencil to hold list of master shapes which can be used while drawing. 

Base framework

The base framework to interpret user interaction with the designer surface is via ‘Command Pattern’ and the concern of separation between the view and core operation logic is through ‘Presentation Model’.

View: Contains the windows form which hosts the Visio drawing activex control as designer surface.  The view also includes interactive menu bars / tool strips and context sensitive menu items.  View includes other windows like managing attributes of shapes, setting color to shapes, panning and Zooming window.

Model: Contains command handler classes which realizes the Execute() method of ICommandHandler interface.  Each command handler is associated to command(s), accepts Event Argument as parameter and perform respecting operational logic.

PresentationModel: Contains instance of view.  Each view (windows form) creates their own instance of Presentermodel and passes view (themselves) as parameter to presentermodel.  Presenter model is view specific which contains Command Invoker that prepares event arguments and invokes model’s command handler. 

Object model graph

Need for object model graph:

Programming model limitation with Visio is to arrive at relation between shapes.  Two shapes can be connected by a connector and this linked relation does not imply underlying business relationship like parent-child / tree / hierarchy.  Diagram has list of shapes; shapes are either linked or overlapped to show relation among them.  Hence there is need to capturing an in-memory object model which can depict both individual shape’s instance and relation with other linked shapes.

What does object model contain?

A Visio shape is mapped to .net entity object which could hold ID of the shape and shape collection which holds list of children shapes.  This collection can hold related shapes / children shapes / overlapping shapes based on the nature of drawing and its business need.  Along with it, the shape entity can have programmer friendly methods like add, delete, find, sort methods on the shape collection.  To add more business dependent logic, custom events can be introduced to shape entity which will trigger events on add/delete operations (as per requirement).

How is object model graph created?

Whenever a new shape is added to the drawing surface, in the corresponding event handler an instance of shape entity class is created passing the shape’s unique Id.  When children shapes are added to a shape, list of children shape entities are created and added to parent shape instance’s shape collection.  Similar is delete functionality. 

Visio features

Visio active-x drawing control

The Visio Drawing Control is a Microsoft ActiveX control that provides full access to the Visio object model (API) and user interface so that you can integrate the Visio user interface, customize its appearance, and automate Visio in your applications. The Visio Drawing Control is provided with both Microsoft Office Visio Standard 2007 and Microsoft Office Visio Professional 2007, and is installed when you install Visio.  Microsoft Office Visio 2007, or another version of Visio that supports the Visio Drawing Control must be installed on any computer where the Visio Drawing Control will be used. When you distribute your application, all users must have licensed copies of a version of Visio that supports the Visio Drawing Control on their computers to use it.  To gain access to the Visio object model, use the Window or Document property of the Visio Drawing Control.  Once you have access to the Visio object model, you can use all the standard objects, methods, properties, and events of the model to automate and customize the control in your program.

Out-of-the-box features

Most of the drawing capabilities and other related features provided by Visio can be achieved using Visio SDK and drawing control.

Pan & zoom

Visio’s Pan & zoom window can be incorporated to your custom application.  Panning / zooming performed through this window will reflect changes of underlying drawing control.

Hyperlinks

Shapes dropped into drawing control can have hyperlink(s).  Adding hyperlink can either be a file or url.  Multiple links can be added and can be made available in the right click context menu.  Follow command will help navigating to the respective hyperlink.

Export to feature

Document object provides SaveAs and Export functions through which the drawing can be saved into multiple formats like VSD, VDX, JPEG, etc.  Using Save As Web API, the drawing can be exported to HTML file which has rich client scripting added to it that provides pan/zoom, search shape, view shapes’ attributes and hyperlinking features enabled on the exported file.

Visio XML schema

Visio drawing can be saved in binary format VSD file.  Alternatively, it support saving into xml format as VDX file which follows Visio XML Schema.  This allows reading and manipulating content of the drawing through programming.  Also, the VDX format provides flexibility and support to save custom data into the SolutionXML tag.  The VDX file can contain multiple solution xml tag which should be uniquely named and can have well formed XML content in it.  Saving your custom application related information can be achieved using get / set solutionxml methods of Document object.

Custom features

Layout management

Aligning & positioning shapes or group of selected shapes in a page is available in Visio.  But this requires additional programming.  Methods like CentreDrawing, Layout and properties like ResizePage are used based on need to manage layout along with applying styles like Hierarchy or flowchart to arrange shapes.  Arranging based on selected style also ties up with direction like Left to right, top to down etc.  Moreover, style to connectors can also be set namely, straight or curved.  Based on nature of drawing and how shapes are linked, programming arranging and positioning shapes are bit complexity involved and needs care.

Expand / collapse

Object model graph plays vital role in implementing many features which cannot be achieved out-of-the-box using Visio APIs.  Since object model graph can be traversed and searched through, when user selects a shape and collapses it, all children shapes are moved to a layer which is marked visible = false.  Every page has two default layers – one for the shapes and other for connectors.  Create new layer and hide it.  Move the list of shapes under selected parent from default layer to hidden layer on collapse command.  Note, the object model graph still has the relationship maintained in it alive.  When user selects a collapsed shape and calls expand, find list of children shapes to the selected parent shape from object model graph.  Move these shapes from hidden layer back to default layer.  Using Layers in Visio and in-memory object model graph helps achieving this feature which is not available in Visio.

Note: similar logic can be applied to create a tree view of all shapes in a separate window where each node in tree view maps to shape in the drawing.  For example: showing WBS items in a tree view for an elaborate Work breakdown structure diagram.

Architectural Extension

Service Map to Service Catalog

Service Catalog is server component to manage list of service maps in the organization.  From service map designer, user can load / publish / edit a service map in is hosted on service catalog.  Service catalog exposes WCF service with BasicHTTP binding and is hosted on IIS along with service catalog website.  Service Map .NET 2.0 client consumes WCF service by adding web reference to service.  Dedicated Command Handler in service map’s model will perform communication with service catalog web service.

Designing Visio Automation Solution.docx

  1) Visio

  2) JPEG

  3) HTML

User can export the current service map from the designer to a visio based file.  This exported file can then be distributed and be opened inside a Microsoft Visio Viewer.  The shapes will contain attributes in the ShapeData window.   Legends, hyprelinks will be preserved.

User can export the current service map from the designer to a JPEG format picture file.  This exported file will give a quick snapshot of the entire service map in a pictorial view.

User can export the current service map from the designer to a HTML file format.  This html file has rich functionality to pan / zoom through the service map, search shape, look for the shape attributes etc.

All the above export options are useful to share and distribute the service map in easily consumable formats via email, add to powerpoint slide or host inside an internal site etc.

Hyperlink option is available on right click context menu of selected shape.  Alternatively, it can be reached from main menu Design >> Hyperlink or from tool bar.

On the hyperlink popup window, user can see list of available hyperlinks which are already added to selected shape.  User can edit existing link, add new link or remove an existing link.

The added hyperlinks are also listed down in the right click context menu of selected shape.  User can click on the corresponding link from the context menu to follow / open the linked item.

Service Map 2.0 designer provides selecting / modifying and applying layout style for the map. 

Configuring layout includes following sub-items:

  - layout style: the style in which the shapes (streams / values) are arranged in a service map.  Options available are Hierarchy and Compact tree. 

  - direction:  the orientation in which the parent and child shapes are arranged in the service map.  Hierarchy style contains left to right as diection option.  Compact tree contains Down then right and Right then down as direction options to select.

  - Connector:  the connector (arrow connecting shapes) can also be selected either to be Curved or Straight.

When are these options useful?

Layout is by default best managed by the designer itself.  But, service maps are sometimes complex and varied in nature from one to another.  By changing and applying best suited layout style / directions, the look and feel and appeal of the service map can be altered to get best fit.

Once, end user opts to change the layout style / direction, all subsequent operations like adding, deleting streams/values will continue to the newly applied layout options.  User can, at any moment opt back to original or different layout options on need basis.

This option is available for the end user via Main menu View >> Configure Layout and also from tool bar.

Note here: User is allowed to configure layout in manual mode too.  Though user has full control on positioning and sequencing the streams / values in a service map under manual layout mode, the base framework will be applied based on selected layout options.

There were discussions around how to manage position and sequence of the shapes while creating / editing a service map using the designer.  As net result, we thought about providing end-user both the options -

  either allow designer to manage layout by itself

  (or)

  manually manage layout by the end-user themself.

Use 'Settings' command either from main menu or from the tool bar.  This pops-up a window to choose the layout option.  For a complex and big sized map, where end-user prefers to postion, group and sequence streams and values based on the way they want to; its much achievable.  Selecting option 'I will manage layout for this service map' will alter layout from automatic to manual.  By this, designer will not provide any layout capability; instead will allow user to completely manage the layout.

Note here: In a manual layout mode, if end user clicks on 'Auto arrange' command - all positioning, sequencing done on manual mode will not be preserved.  A confirmation message on the same will be displayed to end user upon Auto arrange click.  This is to allow end user to get designer's inbuilt support to re-layout in case user still wants to continue manual layouting and get some help out of designer to re-layout the shapes inside the canvas.

By default, automatic layout is applied to new service map.

Am part of this team to provide my contribution.  When I was trying to find a way to run static code analysis (fxcop) to the entire solution as part of team build, I faced a quite good challenge.  TFS build definition file provides a tag <RunCodeAnalsis> which ascepts values namely - Never, Default & Always.  Never - do not run code analysis, Default - use project setting to run code analysis, Always - override project setting while running code analysis.  This is easy and direct approach to include code analysis as part of team build.   Question is - 'how can I exclude rules while running code analysis as part of team build'.  I found the following blog post which answered my question in detail and hence sharing this learning to the community here.  The attached file contains the steps to be followed and a minimum recommended code analysis rule-set which can be applied to msot of the projects.

Disable code analysis rules in team build.docx

- File based operations

This includes creating new service map, opening existing map from file system, saving new map to file location, saving modfication to opened file, saving an existing map to another location (user may wish to do modification to the opened file, but not directly save changes to opened file as they may wish to have the older copy as is and hence allowing them to save into different location), close existing map, printing a service map etc.  These functionalities exists in all Office applications and this designer replicates these mentioned features in almost the same way word or visio does.

- Add / Modify / Delete shapes

Service map is a drawing which contains collection of related (or connected) shapes.  These shapes are fundamentally service map entities.  The following are the components which form these entities - service map, stream, child value.  Service map node forms the root node or the main node.  A stream can be added to a service map node.  A stream or child value can be added to a stream node.  A child value can be leaf node or can have child value(s).  Following the hierarchy user can create an entire service map by adding / deleting shapes and modify their name, assign attributes & legends etc.

- Export facility

User can use this feature to export the service map drawing to other formats like JPEG or a Visio File (.vdx or .vsd).  This feature helps to view / host a service map created in the designer on website, share via email, copy to a powerpoint presentation or view in a Visio Viewer etc.

- Attributes and Legends

The shapes of the service map drawing represent service map entities.  These entities have list of attributes associated.  User can add custom attributes and assign values to those.  Also, the entities may have predefined set of attributes for which user can assign respective values.  These attributes and their values are persisted along with the shape inside the drawing when saved.  Legend represents a way of grouping of service map entities in a drawing.  User can create legend item by providing a group name and assign a unique color to it.  Shapes can then be assigned a legend from list of available group names.  There is a dedicated mini-window inside the ServiceMap designer called Properties window through which user can easily add / modify / delete attribute and manage legend items.

- Pan & Zoom

User can zoom in/out service map drawing and scroll across the canvas (aka. drawing surface) using Pan & Zoom window. 

- Layout management

User can either prefer to manage positioning of shapes in smap by oneself or opt to give control to layout management to designer.  User can select this as a choice available using Settings menu item under Design menu tab.  User can configure various layout options by selecting suitable style (like Hierarchy, flowchat, compact tree) and direction (like top to down, right to left).  Layout management is a value-add feature which makes drawing in the designer surface to effective and increases usability.

- Hyperlinking

Hyperlink(s) can be added to a shape.  The link can be a website url, or file path for another service map drawing, etc.  User will be able to add / modify / delete hyperlinks.  Upon right clicking a shape, added hyperlinks will be visible in the context menu from where user can open the link.

- Collapse / Expand shapes

Service map drawing grow huge in size depending on complexity and nature of the original system.  When a map contains multiple shapes, managing it becomes harder.  Collapse / Expand feature is handy during these scenarios.  User can right click on a shape and select 'collapse' to hide all the children shapes (at all level below the selected shape).  Upon collapsing, the selected shape is uniquely differentiated representing that shape is collapsed and has child(ren) node under it.  A collapsed shape and then be expanded by selecting 'expand' available on right click context menu.

<note to the readers - I will keep this blog post updated with upcoming features of servicemap 2.0>

Microsoft Servicemap is a designer tool that facilitates MOF Consultant to represent an IT infrastructure of customer's organization in a diagramatic manner.

Why ServiceMap?

To answer this question, one should know the broad history of ServiceMap.

Under WWService, 'Support & Health' is one among the ServiceLines.  It provides various offereing and one among them is 'IT Service Mapping'.  IT Service Mapping (SMAP) is designed to help IT and business unit groups define and evaluate Services for their organization. Service Mapping allows customers to ensure that all dependencies and cross functional areas are captured and accountability identified.  The SMAP engagement will be conducted by specialized Microsoft consultants who will team with the customer’s IT organization. The engagement consists of Process and Technology work streams that will include whiteboard design and planning sessions as well as actual tool implementation, conducted over a period of approximately two weeks. 

Early times, consultant used to represent the IT Infra of an org using Microsoft Visio as a drawing platform.  The MOF consultants are usually come from Infra background and possess strong expertise on MOF & ITIL.  Using Visio for this purpose were'nt very easier to accomplish the task.  Also, this excercise spans 1-2 week and usually the Consultant on-job has to meet & team with various groups head in the customer's IT division.  Hence required a need / domain specific tool which will consume less time and more convenient & user friendly to diagramatically represent it.  Also to note is, this tool and the tool's output is leave-behind deliverable at customer's place for their future use.

ServiceMap tool at its version 1.0 was an add-in model to Visio.  Installing this add-in will copy required tempaltes, stencils and additional command handling logics to Visio and MOF consultant used this to prepare Smaps.  These maps are usually large and complex depending on the IT infrastructure size and topology of the customer.  What is lacking on this version is usability & extensibitity.  Challenges were adding more features and making creation / maintenance of smap more user friendly.

ServiceMap's current version 2.0 is a custom windows-based desktop application which provides designer surface to create / modify servicemaps.  Technology bedind is using the drawing capabilities of Visio, providing rich user experiance and adding further capabilities required for the tool which are part of Functional Spec for v2.0 and also to incorporate feedbacks that comes from the users in the field.  Cautious technology decision made analyzing various pros & cons and looking into various alternatives.  This application is basically an Office automation which uses Visio ActiveX drawing control as the underlying canvas - this serves as surface of the map.

This is the solution on which I work on.  This is what I own today! 

Lets say, a Manager has new strategy and he speaks about it through a meeting and email.  And the next day, his reports are still implementing the old one.  Where is the new idea proposed by the Manager gone?  Good idea often have a hard time to succeed in this world. But why?  Communication is the answer. 

The appraoch taken to communicate the idea must make deep impact on the audience and should make it memorable.  Communication technique might be several:  could be a professional inspring speech, or a simple video recording, at times starting with a story or a joke.  A teacher should know better way to convey the lessons to the students.  Teaching methodology adopted by the teacher various to students of Standard I and XII.  Now comes the next key component - the nature of audience.  One should know the audience well: Know what the listeners care about, so can tailor the communication accordingly.  Last piece of my learning is - an idea does not get emphasized by repetition.  No legendary statement is repeated ten times.  If the idea communicated requires repetition, then it probably means the idea wasn't well designed.

To summarize, if getting an innovative idea is one part and communicating it effectively is another important part.  Idea communicated must stick - Understandable, Memorable and Effective in changing thoughts or behavior.  I will suggest my friends to read this book and get to know how important it is to communicate your idea effectively.