One question we hear often about Visio 2003 is "what happened to the Autodiscovery feature?"

The short answer is that it is no longer available. Visio 2003 cannot import directory services information, such as an existing Active Directory structure, and unless you buy a separate add-on, Visio 2003 cannot discover and diagram a network using SNMP.

These features were part of the Visio Enterprise Network Tools add-on to Visio 2002 and Visio 2000 Enterprise Edition (but not Visio Professional 2002, Visio for Enterprise Architects, or Visio 2000 Professional Edition).

Based on customer feedback, we invested our resources in improving the other network diagramming tools and creating new features that benefit a broad cross-section of Visio users, like being able to track comments or publish diagrams to a SharePoint workspace.

For Visio 2003, we did make several improvements to the network diagramming tools, including a new rack diagramming template, a new library of network diagramming shapes that look much better than the earlier ones and have a consistent set of custom properties, and three new pre-defined reports for extracting data from your network diagrams.

If you want to use Visio to map your network, you might want to check out the various third-party products that are available, such as LANsurveyor for Microsoft Office Visio 2003 from Neon Software. LANsurveyor can help you automatically generate diagrams of your LAN or WAN. Network diagrams can include all of your IP-based devices, including routers, switches, servers, printers, SIP-based VoIP phones, and more. If you have access to SNMP-enabled routers and switches, LANsurveyor for Visio also documents switch port and router interface connectivity, so you can see exactly how your devices are connected to your network.

LANsurveyor is included in the Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Resource Kit for IT Professionals. To learn more about the resource kit, follow the link in the See Also section.