Visio 2010 Add-in for SCOM R2 and the SCOM Visio Stencils

Bumped into this issue while writing my blog posting about the Visio 2010 Add-in.

For SCOM designs one can download a very nice set of Visio stencils, targeted at SCOM to be found here. However, these shapes do have some issues when these are used together with the Visio Add-in.

Normally any shape in a Visio drawing can be linked to an object from the SCOM R2 Management Group. When this is done, a Health State icon is neatly displayed in the upper right corner of that same shape:

But with a shape coming from the Visio Stencils made for SCOM this Health State icon isn’t displayed at all when it is linked to an object from the SCOM R2 Management Group:

It took me some time to get it solved, but this is the way to go about it:

1. Insert a shape from the SCOM Visio Stencils and select it;
   
   
2. Go to the Home tab of Visio 2010;
     
   
   
3. Select Group > Group;
   
   
   
4. Go to the Operations Manager tab and link the shape to the required SCOM R2 object by using the Link Shape option. Follow the Wizard and link the required Object from SCOM R2 to the shape;
   
   
   
5. Now a Health State icon will be shown in Visio:
   

All is well now.

One other thing to reckon with though: With the original Visio shapes one might choose another display of the Health State with the Visio Add-in for SCOM R2 as well. How ever these settings do not work well with the shapes coming from the SCOM stencils. The red highlighted Data Graphics are (partially) broken. Only the Health State icon works properly as shown in Step 5, which is highlighted in yellow.