Example data mapping: Google Sheets

Walk through the data mapping for a simple Google Sheet data source

Now we'll walk through a simple example of a pricing proposal. It has just two slides: a title slide and a body slide with the pricing information. Each time I generate the deck for a different prospective client, Slideform will pull in different information for the client name, their logo, number of seats, and pricing.

The slide template looks like this:

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Here is the spreadsheet that corresponds to the pricing proposal. Each line corresponds to a particular prospective client. I have connected this Google Sheet as a data source in Slideform.

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The Configure Data screen

Let's take a look at the Configure Data page, under the Description tab, for this template.

Below the template file you will see on the right side of the screen a preview of each slide in the template. On the left side you will see a series of blue boxes. Each box represents one of the pragmas in the template.

Let's walk through each pragma together--

{{client}} - select from a dropdown

The first pragma is {{client}} - this will hold the client name. For this pragma, I want to set the form so that the user will choose from a dropdown list of the client names that are in the spreadsheet.

First, enter a prompt for this pragma. This is what that the user will see in the form. I want the user to "Select the client".

Next, decide how the user will enter the information, the choices are:

Type in a value - user will be able to enter free text
Select from a dropdown - user will select from a list that you specify
Type in a formula - user will be able to enter a formula for a calculation

I chose Select from dropdown and then clicked the "Preset a Value" button to set the options that will be shown in the dropdown. Screenshot 2023-10-27 at 2.22.06 PM

You can specify formatting for the pragma values if desired. This is helpful if you have dollars or percents that need to be formatted. In the case of text, we don't need to set the formatting.

Next you will select the data source. Under "Where is the data from?", choose your data file.

(If it is not shown here, then you need to connect your data source on the Data Source tab at the top of the page.)

If your data source is a Google Sheet, Excel, or Airtable, choose "Use Predefined KPIs". This will allow you to choose the data based on the column headings in your sheet.

Finally, in the "Select your KPI" box, select the data you want. You can preview the values by clicking the Preview button.

For the {{client}} pragma, I chose the data source and KPI as shown above.

{{fn:date}} - built-in Slideform functions

The next pragma is the date function, {{fn:date}} . This pragma will be filled with the date that the slides are generated. All you need to do is specify the date format.

{{image:clientlogo}} - image pragma

I also used an image pragma in my template, {{image:clientlogo}} . All image pragmas must begin with the word "image:" and they must be associated with a placeholder shape in the slide template. For more, see How to import images.

Since I would like this image to show the client logo in each different version of the template, I will have the user upload the logo when they fill out the form. That means I do not enter anything here for the data mapping.

{{seats}} and {{monthly rate}} - data lookups

On Slide 2, there are data pragmas that can be filled in directly from the Google Sheet.

{{seats}} - how many user licenses they are buying
{{monthly rate}} - the total license cost per month

Since I have the client name stored in the {{client}} pragma, I can look up the remaining pragmas based on the client name!

For example, the data to fill the {{seats}} pragma can be looked up in the sheet based on the client name. Screenshot 2023-10-27 at 2.50.47 PM

Choose "Type in value", and click the "Preset a Value" button.

Next, select the data source and choose "Use Predefined KPIs".

Select the KPI that will fill the {{seats}} pragma. In this case it is column "seats" from Sheet1 in my Google Sheet. You can refer back to the data sheet as necessary to match up the KPIs.

Now we will filter the data in the seats column to only the data for our specific client.

Under Filter the Data, select the client column from the sheet. This is the lookup column.
Then, choose the {{client}} pragma. This is the lookup key.

Now Slideform will pull the number of seats for the specific client that I set in the {{client}} pragma!

I'll repeat this lookup logic for the monthly rate pragma as well.

{{annual cost}} - calculating formulas

My slides include both a monthly and an annual price, but only the monthly rate is found in the Google Sheet. We can calculate the annual cost as 12x the monthly rate in Slideform.

For the {{annual cost}} pragma, choose "Type in a formula" and "Preset a value". For this example, I choose to format the data as currency ($).

Then I entered the formula in the text box:

12 * {{monthly rate}}

This tells Slideform to calculate the value based on the {{monthly rate}} pragma.

❗ Be sure to save the data mapping by clicking save at the bottom of the page!