Examples and best practices

For a complete beginner exercise, use Your first diagram. For lifecycle and save rules, see Work with diagrams.

Supply a verifiable source

Separate components from relationships so the agent can check exact counts:

ID	Component	Type	Owner
APP-01	Customer Portal	Application	Digital Commerce
SVC-01	Order Service	Service	Order Platform
DATA-01	Orders Database	Data store	Data Platform

From	To	Label
APP-01	SVC-01	Submit order
SVC-01	DATA-01	Read and write orders

Use these tables as the complete source. Open Visio and create one application context diagram with three components and two directed, labeled connections. Store the supplied IDs and owners as Shape Data. Propose real masters before drawing and reuse the approved mapping. Don’t invent missing information. Read back and compare all components, connections, labels, and metadata. Save as a new app-context.vsdx and report the path and any differences.

For organizational mappings, use Custom shapes rather than guessing stencil or master names.

Make requests precise

Instead of	Try
Improve this diagram.	Insert Fraud Review between Order Service and Payment Provider; preserve everything unrelated.
Fix the appearance.	Widen Order Service enough to fit its label; preserve its position and attached connectors.
Put these applications in a box.	Use a native Platform container and make App A, App B, and App C actual members.

Include the source, target file/page, scope, structure, shape policy, save policy, and acceptance checks. State whether to save over the original, save a new copy, or leave changes unsaved.

Break up large work

Understand the source, review the plan and masters, author, read back and compare, then make focused refinements. Ask for visual validation after authoring, not as a substitute for source reconciliation.

Before sharing, inspect labels, identifiers, connector direction/endpoints, native memberships, Shape Data, text fit, and preserved content in Visio. Keep external systems outside internal boundaries and test any smart-shape behavior your workflow depends on. Save the approved result. Check the result of a failed operation before retrying; part of the task may already have succeeded. Avoid simultaneous agent and manual edits.

Put stable, recurring standards in a custom agent. Keep each individual prompt about the current task.