Generating Active Directory Diagrams with Visio 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003
Last week we published a new Office Talk column: Generating Active Directory Diagrams with Visio 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. I am very happy about this and I have to say that I had a lot of fun writing this article and code.
Everything started back in September at PDC when I met with a customer who asked how to build custom Active Directory Diagrams with Visio 2003. We talked about the possibilities and in general I explained how he could build an Active Directory diagram. Active Directory is one of my favorite topics :). When I came back to Redmond I met with my friend and peer Saul Candib, who is the programmer writer for Visio. We talked about the scenario and we decided to work together to build a code sample and a technical article that would help Office developers to learn how to:
- Connect and query an Active Directory from managed applications.
- Understand the fascinating ways in which you can use the Visio PIAs to create all sorts of custom visual solutions.
- How to build a Visio 2003 Add-in that generates a custom Active Directory Visio drawing.
One important note for developers who are already working with Visual Studio 2005. The Visio 2003 SDK Add-in/Add-on wizard was designed for Visual Studio 2003, and that approach will not work with Visual Studio 2005. However, you can build a Shared Add-in (instead of using the Visio 2003 SDK Add-in/Add-on wizard) and everything will work just fine. Bill Morein, who is a Program Manager for Visio wrote this interesting blog entry where he explains how to create Visio COM Add-ins with Visual Studio 2005.
I hope that you enjoy this article and find it useful if you are one of those developers who are currently looking for options to build custom Visio 2003 solutions. I can say that Saul and I were really happy to put this together and we would be quite pleased to know if you liked it :-).
Have a peek and enjoy!