Rotating a shape on a slide was already explained in an article. Handy when you want to rotate the needle of a gauge on your information dashboard. Easier than rotating is changing the width of a given shape on your slide. Think about a bar that is linked to a database value and that you want to visualize on a slide.Â
Use DataPoint to create a live connection to e.g. a Microsoft Excel worksheet. Use the List button of the Connections group, select the Microsoft Excel data provider from the list of providers and click the Add Connection button.
Then set up a link to the sheet and range of your Excel document and specify the data refresh rate. Use for example 1 second for fast updates on your slide.
Click OK to close and you will see a preview of the Excel data.Â
Select the shape that you want to grow or shrink based on a database value. Here in this example, we will work on the first top meter. That meter there has a scale and a floating (light-blue) bar to indicate the value on its scale. That light-blue shape is what we are going to animate and update.
Enlarge the shape to its maximum position. Here to 500 miles.
With the shape selected, click DataPoint, Meter button.
In the Meter properties form, select the data connection that you want to use, and then select the column that represents the value that you want to visualize.
Next, set the Property option to Width.
In the Width properties pane, set the minimum and maximum value. Here we know that our database will always have a value between 0 and 500.  Then, set the maximum value to 500, and click button Use current width of shape as the maximum width and hit OK.
DataPoint will now calculate the width of this shape. It will plot the shape so that its database value matches between the minimum and maximum size.
Set the slideshow mode to kiosk mode to run forever. Put the Excel data file in a network share. Update the values of the worksheet when newer information is coming in.
DataPoint will check for data changes and update your information screen or dashboard in real-time without stopping the slideshow. And it will not brutally update the value on the screen. No! It will gradually move to the new position by smoothly increasing or decreasing the shape.
