Adding a New Shape to Existing Org Chart Does Not Add Linked Data

Dear Nik Kaprantzas,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

As per your description, please let us cooperate and please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

 It seems that in your Existing Organization Chart' the new shapes are being added to my org chart without data displaying in the shapes of Block 1.

I read all your description carefully and as per your description, your setting/steps are correct. I need to check your exact created fields in Block in your Organization Chart, in this situation, if you don’t mind and if it is convenient for you, could you please send copy of your document file or recording video to me so that I can look from my side, and I will check this behavior and help you to fix and verify the result with you.

If there is confidential information, then you can send it to me in Private Message (PM). you can access PM from the top right corner of this page, as shown in image below:

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely, 

Waqas Muhammad

Hello,

For some reason, I didn't get a notification of your reply; I apologize for the late response.

Because our org chart has proprietary and personal info of our staff, I wouldn't be able to share the files or a video of my steps, as it would be in violation of our data policy. But, it's good to know that it sounds like I'm doing the steps in the right order. I will note that I'm not using Visio's default data fields, except for Name; all of the fields for the chart are custom fields (team name, job title, Internal ID number, and pronouns). Is Visio only able to auto-import this data if the fields are related to the default data fields?

Hi Nik Kaprantzas,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

And I appreciate your kind words.

Regarding to, "Is Visio only able to auto-import this data if the fields are related to the default data fields?" in Visio, we can refresh the data that is imported into a Visio diagram by using the Custom Import. And when we import data, a row of data gets linked (or associated) to a shape.

Maybe there is data conflicts problem, which are usually caused by rows that were added or deleted in the data source after your diagram was created.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

"Maybe there is data conflicts problem, which are usually caused by rows that were added or deleted in the data source after your diagram was created."

Yes, that seems to be the issue, in that what I'm trying to do is add a new staff member to the Org Chart. The new staff member's data is in a new row in the Excel workbook, which gets pulled in when I refresh the data connection via the Data > Refresh All command. When the data comes in, the External Data window shows that the new line was imported from Excel, but is not linked to a shape.

This is when I select the Position Notch, click on the new unlinked row, and drag the row to the page; this creates a new Position shape, links the row to the shape, and fills in the name correctly in Block 2, but fails to fill in the other fields into Block 1.

Hi Nik Kaprantzas,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

And I appreciate your kind words.

To narrow down your problem, if possible, could you please create an organization chart with a custom field (for test purpose) and check if you meet the same behavior, it will help for us to check whether the problem is related with specific Visio file.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad

Thank you for your patience while I tested making a new Visio file. I created a new Visio org chart from scratch using the same data parameters, and had the same result: data is refreshed, a new line is in the External Data window (the line for the newly added staff whose info wasn't in the original data file/org chart), the data line is dragged to the org chart, the name is placed into Block 2, and Block 1 is completely blank.

The only thing I can think of is that it has something to do either with the form of the data coming in from Excel (which is just a named table that is pulled into Excel via a query from the database), or something that Visio is doing to the data as it's being refreshed.

I do notice that, in the External Data window, the new data that comes in has the correct labels; however, when I right click on the linked shape and select "Define Shape Data", the Name of some of the data fields are different than the other shapes. For instance, each staff member has a unique numeric ID (StaffID), and the Supervisor field is the StaffID of their supervisor. But, these fields were named "_VisDM_StaffID" and "_VisDM_Supervisor" in the new data entry, even though the existing data has just "StaffID" and "Supervisor" as both the data label and the data name. Not sure why Visio is doing that, or if it's affecting anything.

Hi Nik Kaprantzas,

Thanks for your valuable feedback and sharing updates with us and I really appreciate your effort and your precious time doing. 

And I appreciate your kind words.

I request you, please allow me some time to do further test on my side and I will update you here ASAP.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Waqas Muhammad