Automatically generate PowerPoint PPTX presentations from template
Let us say you need to create company report presentations every month. This article shows how to automate populating PowerPoint presentations using PPTX templates with the help of Plumsail Documents. To show the logic of how to populate PowerPoint presentations, we’ll create a company report with tables and charts from a PPTX template.
Below are the pictures of slides from a template and the resulting presentation - title and body slides. You can download complete files from the links above the screenshots to compare them.
Template |
Result |
|---|---|
Configure Process
First, register or log in to your Plumsail account to start configuring the process.
Create Process
Add a new process. It’s possible to create a new process from scratch or start from one of the pre-made templates. You can browse the template library and search for a company report template. Otherwise, create from blank.
Give a name to the Process to recognize it later. Select PPTX for a template type.
Configure template
Once you’ve created the process, you’ll jump to its first step – Configure Template.
It includes two substeps:
Editor;
Settings.
In Editor, you can compose the template from scratch or upload a pre-made one. It’s also possible to modify the uploaded template online.
Feel free to download the company report template if you haven’t downloaded it yet as we gave the link above in the table showing the template and the result.
Then upload it to the process.
Templating syntax
When you create your own templates, mind the templating language. Plumsail PowerPoint PPTX templates use a different approach than most other templating solutions. It uses a minimum of syntax to make your work done.
To learn more about the templating engine, check out the documentation article.
In short, the templating engine thinks that everything between such curly {{ }} brackets is variables where it will populate your data. In our case the most basic example would be {{title}} and {{subtitle}} tags. They let the engine know that we want to render the report title and its subtitle.
We also included more complex visual content like tables and charts into our template. But there is nothing too difficult here as well. Please, see how to handle tables and charts in PPTX templates.
Test template
You can test the template to see how it will look at the end by clicking the Test template button.
After you click on the Test template button, you will see the dialog where you can fill in the auto-generated testing form. Form fields are created based on tokens from your document template. You can adjust the look of the testing form by changing token types.
Once you’ve tested the template, press Save&Next to proceed further - to the Settings substep.
Here you set the following parameters.
Template mode
It is Testing by default. It means you won’t be charged for this process runs, but result documents will have a Plumsail watermark. Change it to Active to remove the watermark.
Output filename
Use tokens to make it personalized. They work the same way as in the template. For instance, we use the following tokens to define the output file name - {{title}} and {{@date}}:format(MM.yyyy)}. As a result, we’ll receive a report with the name - Plumsail Monthly Report 07.2023.
Output type
By default, it is the same as your template’s format. In this particular case, it’s PPTX. And we kept it to create the PPTX PowerPoint presentation from a template.
Test template
Once you’ve customized all the settings, you can test the template to see the result as we did it before.
When everything is done here, click on Save & Next to set up deliveries.
Delivery
The next step is delivery. For demonstrating purpose, we’ll store the result PowerPoint file in OneDrive. But there are other options.
You need to connect to your OneDrive from the Plumsail account. After that, set the folder’s name where to save the ready document. Here you can use tokens as well.
You can configure as many deliveries as you need.
Start Process
Now everything is ready, and you can start generating PowerPoint presentations. The step Start process will show available options with a description for each.
Start Process in Zapier
In order to start the process in Zapier, we need to create a new Zap with two steps. This is how it will look in the end:
For now, let’s move on to setting up each of our steps:
Set trigger
The first thing we need to do is set up the trigger. We chose Plumsail Forms as a trigger as an example. You can choose any other trigger. Next, go to trigger settings:
App & event
Specify New submission as an event. Since we selected the application earlier, Plumsail Form is already installed in this field.
Account
Connect Plumsail account to Zapier account.
Trigger
Select the form from the list of Plumsail Forms.
Test
Run the test.
Start Process in Plumsail Documents
After setting a trigger, add an action: Start process. For that, search for Plumsail Documents and choose the action Start Process. Go to process settings:
App & event
Specify Start Process as an event. Since we selected the application earlier, Plumsail Documents is already installed in this field.
Account
Connect Plumsail account to Zapier account.
Action
Select the process in Plumsail Documents. After selecting the process, you will see the fields corresponding to the tokens from the document template. Map them with the output from the trigger to ensure that data entered into the form will populate the template.
Test
Run the test.
All settings are complete; now every time the form is submitted, this Zap will automatically start the document generation process from the PowerPoint template.
Start Process in Power Automate
To start the process of generating documents in Power Automate, we need to create a Power Automate flow like below:
Let’s start from the beginning. In Power Automate, we create a new flow, give it a name, and select a trigger. In our case, we chose the Plumsail Form, but the trigger can be set to any of the proposed options.
Let’s move on to setting the steps in flow:
Set up a trigger
The first step is to select a form from Plumsail Form account. If you haven’t signed in before, you’ll need to enter your account information to connect it to Power Automate. Select a pre-prepared form and press the + New step button.
Choose an operation
The next step is to select an operation to start generating the document. Using the search bar, find the Plumsail Documents connector and the Start document generation process action. Then, select the process you need to launch. After that, you will see the fields corresponding to the tokens from the document template. Map them with the output from the trigger to ensure that data entered into the form will populate the template.
Our Power Auotmate flow setup process is now complete. It is presented as two steps: collecting and passing the data from the form to our template, and processing the data and creating a document from it based on our template.
Use Zapier or Power Automate to transfer data from custom applications to PowerPoint templates to start the document generation process.
You also can start the process :
submitting JSON corresponding to template tokens;
Note
There is a separate action in the Plumsail Documents connector for Microsoft Power Automate - Create PPTX document from template. Use it if you don’t need all power of processes and just want to generate a document from a template.