Event Software using Google Calendar

It is summer and in the summer people go to festivals and concerts. Let’s put together event software to create an information screen for concerts where you display the upcoming events on a television screen. Information of the events is stored in a Google Calendar this time. A Google Calendar is an electronic agenda that you can maintain via a web browser. So, when you are on the move, you can consult your calendar via smartphone.

This information will be read out by DataPoint and then displayed on your screen in real-time. Change the name of the event in your calendar (via your browser) and it gets updated in real-time on your connected screens. Perfect integration between a Microsoft PowerPoint slide show (the presentation tool for information screens) and Google Calendar.

Click to open the DataPoint menu and click the List button of the Connections group.

Select the Google Calendar node in the provider list and click the Add Query button.

Click the Authenticate button in order to grant DataPoint to read your Google Calendar.

Allow DataPoint to read out your events and calendar information, turning PowerPoint into easy to use event software.

First of all, you can select the calendar that you want to import. Potentially you have multiple calendars on your account. Select the correct one here, the one for displaying.

There are 2 date-related parameters to select your data. One goes back a number of days and the other one selects a number of days in the future that you can import in your slide show.

Choose a data refresh rate that suits your business needs.

Click OK to close and see a preview of data.

We start a new presentation and we use some shapes to display the first event. Just draw the different text boxes on your slide with static texts.

Select the first text to host the name of the event, or the name of the group or concert and click the Text box button of the DataPoint menu.

Assign the column named Title of row number 1 to this shape. Click OK to close. Whatever content of your first event of your Google Calendar, is now dynamically linked to this text box.

Select the second text box and click the Text box button again. Choose Start as the column.

In the preview, you will see that the start field of the Google Calendar entry is a data and time field together. We want to display the date part of this value only. Click the Format tab and select Date and time as category. In the Type options, choose a date only notation and click OK to assign it to the selected text box.

Select the 3rd text box and click the Text box button. We will choose the Start field or column again to show the hour that the concert commences.

At the Format tab, choose now a time only option. Clock OK to close.

Select the shapes of the first event and duplicate them a few times to fill the slide. Select all fields of the second event.

Click the DataPoint +1 shortcut to increment the row number. These text boxes will now show the information of the second event. Repeat these steps for the other concert blocks on this slide.

Almost done! Click the Set Up Slide Show button of the Slide show menu option.

Set the Show Type to Browsed at a Kiosk (full screen) and click OK to close.

Start the slide show and maintain the information in your Google Calendar by using your smartphone or a web browser. Now you have turned PowerPoint and Google Calendar into event software!