AEON SERVICES LTD

SharePoint Consultants

Bowtie Designer FAQ

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When will Bowtie Designer be available?

Launch date for Version 1..1 was July 2025.

What’s new in Version 1.1?

See the summary for Bowtie Designer Version 1.1

What is a Bowtie Diagram?

A bowtie diagram is a graphic used to visualize a risk in a single easily understood picture. The headline risk or “Top Event” at the centre is bounded by possible causes (on the left) and possible outcomes (to the right). The purpose of the diagram is to illustrate barriers which reduce the likelihood of occurrence, or reduce the severity of the outcomes.

Who uses Bowties?

Bowtie diagrams are used in many disciplines and domains, including for example:

  • Industrial process safety
  • Information security and cyber security risks
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Aviation safety
  • Finance

What does the Bowtie Designer app do?

Bowtie Designer is an App that you can add to your SharePoint® Online site. Once it’s installed, you can build and interact with Bowtie Diagrams on your company SharePoint® site, and easily share:

  • As many diagrams as you want
  • As many SharePoint pages as you need
  • Add notes, links, descriptions
  • Zoom in and navigate around areas of large diagrams
  • Export image as a vector diagram
  • Use familiar SharePoint® controls to manage who can view and edit diagrams

Can I restrict who can edit the diagrams?

Yes, the web app respects the logged-in user’s permissions on the list where the data is stored. You can assign different permissions to each list.

Can it occupy the whole page width?

Yes, if you create a single page web app on your SharePoint site.

Can I install it on our on-premises SharePoint site?

Probably, give it a try. We only support the app on SharePoint Online.

The unpaid version is the same as the paid-for version, but with the following restrictions:

  • Maximum 20 diagram elements per diagram
  • Cannot export/import data
  • Our logo appears on the diagram

What’s in the paid-for version?

After you have installed the unpaid version, if you decide you need additional features, contact us to obtain a licence key which is valid on your SharePoint Online domain (e.g. fabrikam.sharepoint.com). This key is available as a one-off purchase and will unlock the restricted features on the app for the specified domain name.

  • Hundreds of items per diagram (thousands, if you need them)
  • A search feature (you’ll need it when the diagram grows)
  • Import/export data
  • Remove Aeon Services logo from the diagram

Can we trial the paid-for features?

We can issue a time-limited licence key for a period of up to 7 days.

How do I build my bowtie diagram?

For starters, here’s a guide to the different elements you need to add, and what they mean.