Interactive flowchart examples
by Rod Ward, Member Australia Chapter and QPI SIG
I’ve provided a zip file you can download, containing a typical Visio file of a navigable business process, created according to the methodology I outlined in “How to build an interactive flowchart with Visio.” This is a version of a Visio file that I did for a client, with all the references to the client removed. This process is a Workplace Hazard Management Process. There is another more complex one for handling actual safety incidents (where someone gets hurt or real damage occurs) and it has at least three levels, but this one shows the basic idea just as well.
The zip file contains the same Visio file published as HTML so that you can see it as a web-based process flow. This is where you really get the benefits of linking the shapes on the individual pages together.
In the web version the home page is a pipeline diagram. This is the simplest view of any entire process and only seeks to show the names and order of major phases. If you click anywhere on the pipeline it jumps to an expanded view of the same process (as a swim lane diagram) which shows the major roles involved in performing each phase. On this expanded diagram, if you click any action shape (the yellow ones) you jump down one level to a diagram that just deals with that phase. This shows the hierarchical nature of processes and how processes fit within one another like “wheels within wheels.”
Each of the shapes on these lower level diagrams was originally hyperlinked to a web page on the company intranet that gave the user a full set of instructions about how to perform that specific task. So the Visio document (in web-based form) was actually used to navigate the process and get online help for any step at the same time. I removed these hyperlinks for this version because anyone not connected to the company intranet would get only a 404 error page.
You can actually have more than one link on any given shape in Visio. When you click a shape with multiple hyperlinks on it, Visio displays a little drop-down list of the links for the user to choose from.
On one of the lower level diagrams, the initiating and terminating events (the reddish coloured shapes at each end of the process) are linked to diagrams of previous or subsequent phases. This shows the sequential nature of processes; how the phases are like links in a chain. Using these event links, you can follow the process from one end to the other and back again.
My reason for producing these diagrams is to create training materials for new users. Process designers often have an enormous one-page version of the entire process showing all steps, printed on a flatbed plotter and requiring a big table to display. These gigantic diagrams are intimidating to beginners or end users trying to learn how to follow such a process, and of no use in training, where anything given to learners as a handout has to fit into a workbook or a PowerPoint slide. For such an audience you have to start with a very simple view of the entire process (the pipeline or the expanded swim lane of it) and then drill down progressively to more an more detail. This progressive revelation of the complexity allows the learner to master the process in small chunks, one piece (or phase) at a time.
As an additional benefit, when a large complex process is broken down this way, the original designers also find that they begin to understand it better. In fact many times, the errors in the design fall out or become apparent, whereas previously the complexity allowed them to remain undetected.