Purchase approval swimlane

How it works

1. Define the grid

   Declare the requester, budget owner and operations lanes, then add intake, review, decision and fulfilment phases.

2. Place the steps

   Use typed start, step, decision and end nodes with their lane and phase identifiers.

3. Connect the outcomes

   Add the approval handoff and an explicit revision path back to review. Reopen the VSDX before rendering PNG and SVG.

This is the complete example file used to generate the download. The walkthrough runner creates the output directory and produces the additional previews.

using OfficeIMO.Visio;
using OfficeIMO.Visio.Diagrams;

namespace OfficeIMO.Examples.Showcase.Workflows;

/// <summary>Maps a purchase approval across requester, budget owner and operations with an explicit revision path.</summary>
internal static class ApprovalSwimlane {
    internal static void Create(string folder) {
        var document = VisioDocument.Create(Path.Combine(folder, "example.vsdx"))
            .SwimlaneDiagram("Purchase approval", swim => swim
                .Theme(VisioStyleTheme.Modern())
                .Lane("requester", "Requester").Lane("owner", "Budget owner").Lane("operations", "Operations")
                .Phase("intake", "Intake").Phase("review", "Review").Phase("decision", "Decision").Phase("fulfil", "Fulfil")
                .Start("submit", "Submit request", "requester", "intake")
                .Step("check", "Check need", "owner", "review")
                .Decision("approve", "Approved?", "owner", "decision")
                .Step("revise", "Clarify request", "requester", "decision")
                .Step("order", "Place order", "operations", "decision")
                .End("receive", "Confirm receipt", "operations", "fulfil")
                .Flow("submit", "check", "request").Flow("check", "approve")
                .Exception("approve", "revise", "revise").Handoff("approve", "order", "yes")
                .Flow("revise", "check", "resubmit").Flow("order", "receive"));
        document.Save();
    }
}

Run it from the source checkout

Clone the OfficeIMO repository and run this command from its root with the .NET 10 SDK. The first run restores the example project's dependencies.

dotnet run --project OfficeIMO.Examples -f net10.0 -- --showcase-workflows --showcase-example visio-approval-swimlane

The files are written to OfficeIMO.Examples/bin/Debug/net10.0/Documents/Workflows/visio-approval-swimlane/. To use the example in your application, start with the Visio guide and its package setup.

Continue with another example

• VisioOrganisation chart with team vacancies
• WordAn editable decision record