New graphical viewing capabilities for Essential Architecture Manager are now available. A Visio export tool, recently contributed by Clint Cooper, enables the contents of the Essential repository to be exported to and viewed in Microsoft Visio. Adding to this, the latest release of Essential Architecture Manager brings views of the models that are defined graphically to the viewer environment.

Many thanks to Clint Cooper for the Visio Export Tool, which exports data from the Essential Repository to Visio allowing visualisation of the information held in the meta model.  This adds another dimension to the reporting capabilities by providing great visuals that can be extremely useful, for example, for Senior Management Briefings.  The Visio Export Tool can be downloaded via Essential Tools and Components section of the Share page.

On a similar note, version 1.3 of Essential is now available which allows snapshots of the graphical models defined in the Protégé modelling environment to be published to the Essential Viewer. This latest update, also in response to demand from the community, has improved the Essential Widgets and Essential Viewer to include the snapshots of the graphical models in relevant reports such as Business Process definitions, Application Module Summaries and Technology Product reports.

The Visio Export Tool is Clint’s second contribution, the first being a Data Load Tool which enables data to be loaded into Essential from other tools, which is also available from the Essential Tools and Components section of the Share page.

If any other users have any tools they think would be beneficial to the wider community that they would be prepared to share, please contact us via the Contribution page of the Community section.