Manually creating client reports can can be time consuming, resource-intensive and inefficient. If your study has quarterly, monthly or even weekly reporting requirements across multiple markets or segments it can become quite costly to your team.
Protobi helps you produce reports with less time and effort with our PowerPoint export features. You can now create and automate PowerPoint reports within the same tool where you also explore and analyze your data.
This tutorial shows how your team can use Protobi to streamline your entire tracking program and update reports automatically.
Import data
Start with your raw survey data and create a new project from scratch.
Design the online dashboard
The next step is to neatly organize and edit the charts in your dashboard.
Make design tweaks so each appears in a form suitable for your analysis:
- Start by running Autogroup to organize your data into sections.
- Compact checkboxes and ratings into tidy collections
- Extract common text into parent groups
- Translate text verbatims
- Bin numeric values into ranges
- Recode text verbatims
- Set filters to reflect skip patterns
- Change chart types
- Zero fill missing values
- Edit value formats
Learn more in our Basic setup tutorial.
Chart design
The charts in your online dashboard should reflect the look and feel of the report you want to deliver.
You can use different chartTypes and chartOptions to stylize the charts.
Export charts from Protobi to PowerPoint
Select your polished charts and export them to PowerPoint. You can also group the questions you want to include in your PowerPoint report onto the same tab to make exporting easier (i.e. the Chart gallery group seen in the image below).
Once grouped together, you can simply select the entire group and choose Export>as slides to PowerPoint.
Note: Protobi can also export into a old PowerPoint report. So, if you already have a historical report that you use for your study, you do not need to export the charts anew out of Protobi.
The exported charts will reflect the design choices you applied in the online dashboard. And in the Arrange>Selection panel you will see that each chart is named and the name is same as the chart's key in the Protobi online dashboard.
Note: If you're using a historical report, you can manually connect charts in your PowerPoint to charts in Protobi by editing the shape name in the Arrange>Selection panel.
Build PowerPoint client report
Use the exported Protobi charts to build out your report. You can copy, paste, change colors and reposition the charts in PowerPoint.
As long as the chart's shape name is unchanged, Protobi will be able to connect the online charts to the corresponding PowerPoint shape and update it in place.
For example, you can change the colors of the exported charts in PowerPoint. When you upload the edited PowerPoint as a template, you can export the charts into the template without affecting the colors of the template.
Upload the edited PowerPoint report as a template
Once you have the final version of your report, upload it as a template in the data section of project settings.
Update PowerPoint Options for groups and elements
Once you have uploaded the template, got back to your Protobi dashboard to update the PowerPoint options on the export group.
- defaultSlideLayout: The default PPTX slide layout for charts that are not named in the PPTX template.
- exportAs: Export chart as 'native' chart, as editable 'shapes' or a static 'image'.
- templateKey: The name of the template table in the data section of project settings.
Note: If you want to export only one chart at a time, then you will also want to set these attributes for each individual chart as well. But if you will always export the entire group, then you only need to set the powerpointOptions at the group level.
Set update data only
Set the group and/or each chart included in your report to export as data only in the chartType dialog. This way each time you export the charts, only the underlying data of the PowerPoint chart is replaced and any manual changes you made in the PowerPoint template won't be overwritten.
Note: Similar to the other powerpointOptions, updateDataOnly can also be set at the group level. But if you want the flexibility to export and update only select charts, then set updateDataOnly for each individual chart.
View chart to template connections
Protobi has a chartType that visualizes the PowerPoint to Protobi chart connections.
Select the group with your report questions and choose clone (simple) from the advanced menu.
The PowerPoint connector is not a first-class chartType yet, but in the JSON editor for the clone you create you can manually set the chartType to “PPTXConnector”. After you manually edit chartType, press “Ok” on the JSON dialog.
If the tab now appears blank, got back to the JSON editor, and find the “resources" attribute. Be sure that the PPTX name (highlighted below) exactly matches the table name (not file name) of the report you uploaded to the data section of project settings.
Result:
Update charts using an Excel Workbook
Sometimes our clients already have a process to update their PowerPoint report with Excel. Or, the data that goes into a chart requires complex Excel calculations that they do not want to recreate in Protobi.
Protobi lets you upload your Excel workbook, visualize the Excel to PPTX chart connections, and export from Protobi to update the report. Each time you want to update the report, simply update your Excel workbook and re-upload it to Protobi and re-export to get an updated report.
First upload your Excel workbook as a grey document table in the data section of project settings.
In your open project, select the group with your report questions and choose clone (simple) from the advanced menu.
Change the chartType in your newly cloned group. The Excel to PowerPoint connector is not a first-class chartType yet, but in the JSON editor for the clone you create you can manually set the chartType to “XLSXtoPPTX”. After you manually edit chartType, press “Ok” on the JSON dialog.
Your group will then look like the below image. Press “Add connection”.
If you press “Add connection” and nothing happens, got back to the JSON editor and find the “resources" attribute.
Check that the xlsx name exactly matches the table name (not file name) of the Excel workbook you uploaded to the data section of project settings. Also be sure the “url” has the same pattern as the below example (keep in mind your dataset ID which is the long string of numbers and letter will be different).
Also make sure the “excel” attribute exists and there is a resource again with the name of the table with your Excel workbook.
Your connector should look like the image below, and when you press “Add connection”, a new row is added to the connector.
Note: the Excel Range and Chart data columns can take a named Excel range (e.g. sample_overview) as well as explicit ranges (e.g. Sheet1!A1:B3).
Each chart that you want to update needs to have a connection.
Add data for next waves
Now that you have a new group that is capable of export data only into existing charts and tables, you can filter or update data with new waves to export a different set of data output to generate a new PowerPoint deck.
Refresh online dashboard
Select the specific group and - Export Powerpoint to update data only
This is no different than the PowerPoint export function that you have used, except with the updated pptxOptions, you now can have PowerPoint deck that has data updated based on your filter or new wave of data.
Export report charts and tables
Data / PowerPoint template
In the data section of a Protobi project, you can store multiple files, including PowerPoint files that can be used as custom templates.
PowerPoint Select Pane shape names
PowerPoint identifies its charts by slide numbers and name. You can see these name by opening the “Selection Pane”. Often names are generic and duplicated across different slides, such as “Subtitle 1”, "Title 9", etc. However, you can name specific charts or groups with a name that can be identified by Protobi.
Protobi automatically names charts when exporting new charts to PowerPoint
When Protobi When exporting data to PowerPoint as a new chart, the chart is automatically named after the element "key". This name will be preserved if you copy the chart from one slide to another or from one PowerPoint deck to another.
Protobi looks for identically named charts when exporting before creating new charts for PowerPoint
Before creating a new chart, Protobi will look for existing charts in the PowerPoint template with an identical name as the key of the element being exported. If such a chart exists, Protobi will export the element to it in place instead of creating a new chart.
