What are Snapshot Presentations?

A DataPoint-enabled presentation is a normal PowerPoint presentation that is linked to data sources via the DataPoint add-on. First you set up your data connections and then you start linking these data connections to text boxes, charts, images and tables.

The advantage of using DataPoint is that when you open the presentation, it refreshes its linked content automatically. Even more, when you run the slideshow, it updates its data during the show, all in real-time.

But sometimes you want to create snapshot presentation for archiving or reporting. A snapshot presentation is like a snapshot of your data and then projected in your presentation. You can save the snapshot presentation or distribute it to others, but once that a DataPoint-enabled presentation, became a snapshot presentation, its dynamic content is not updated anymore. It became completely static.

Preparation of a Snapshot Presentation

First is to have your raw data. In the sample, we used a Microsoft Excel document. In the document, we list our projects and some key-figure information for reporting to our management.

Then we use a PowerPoint presentation to visualize our project information with text boxes and gauges. We use DataPoint to set up the links. This slide is linked to the first row of the data.

For repeated and similar data, we can use a data scrolling to generate virtual slides, as many as we have data.  We activate our data scrolling so that we can report all project information with this single slide.

Generate Snapshot

Next, we can have a snapshot presentation by clicking the Snapshot button.

A new PowerPoint report or statistical presentation is generated for us. It is based on the actual data. When data scrolling was set in this presentation, it creates as many new slides as long as there is data. Each slide holds different data.

The user can save this presentation on a network share or share it via mail to others.

The advantage of using snapshot presentations is that the user can create a statistical report of the data and archive it. Another advantage of snapshot presentations, is that the receivers do not need to have DataPoint installed, nor do they need direct access to the data sources. Snapshot presentations are real time saving presentations. Once that they are set up, you just open your presentation and click to generate a new snapshot presentation.

This can be done on a regular base; daily, weekly or monthly. No more mistakes, consistent output, regular reporting and thus you can always review the presentations and the data and correct your the business when needed.