Skip to main content

Create Presentation Templates for Data-Driven Presentations

Turn your business data into professional presentations automatically. This guide shows you how to create presentation templates that can be populated with data from meetings, CRM systems, project management tools, and other integrations.

Ideal for:

  • 📞 Post-meeting summaries from calls and conferences
  • 🎯 Client presentations based on opportunity data and discovery sessions
  • 📋 Project status decks from planning meetings and project systems
  • 📊 Sales presentations customized with prospect and opportunity information
  • 🔄 Recurring reporting formats with dynamic content from your integrations
  • 📈 Executive dashboards with real-time metrics and KPIs

Congratulations on starting your first presentation template. In this guide, we will show you how to create your first presentation template and how to upload it to your TurboDocx account.

Video Tutorial​

Step 1: Create New Presentation Template​

Let's start with creating our first presentation template.

  1. Open PowerPoint or your preferred presentation application.

  2. Create your slide content, leaving areas where you want dynamic content.

  3. For each variable area, you'll need to create invisible shapes to hold your variables.

Screenshots Coming Soon

Step 2: Setting Up Variables in Slides​

For slide deck templates, follow these specific steps to ensure variables work correctly:

  1. Delete existing content from the slide where you want dynamic content

  2. Insert a shape:

    • Go to Insert → Shape in the ribbon
    • Choose a rectangle
    • Draw the shape where you want the dynamic content to go

  3. Add your variable:

    • Click inside the shape
    • Type your variable name (e.g., {WhatWeHeard})
    • Remember: all one word, no spaces

  4. Align text to top:

    • With the shape selected, go to Shape Format → Align Text → Top
    • This keeps everything uniform across slides

  5. Make the shape invisible:

    • Set Shape Fill to "No Fill"
    • Set Shape Outline to "No Fill"
    • This removes the colored box, making it invisible

  6. Format the text:

    • Change the font color to black (or your preferred color)
    • This makes it easy and clear to see in your final deck
Screenshots Coming Soon

Example Slide Setup​

For a slide with sections like:

  • What we heard
  • How we can help
  • Follow-up questions

Create separate invisible shapes for each section with variables like:

  • {WhatWeHeard}
  • {HowWeCanHelp}
  • {FollowUpQuestions}

Each variable should be in its own invisible rectangle shape, not mixed with other text.

Step 3: Upload Presentation Template​

Now that we've created our first presentation template, let's upload it to TurboDocx.

  1. Login to your TurboDocx account you should land on the Templates tab if not it can be found on the left side. Then, On the top right of your window, click on the "New Template" button.

  2. As you can see, there are multiple ways to upload a Document. For this example, we will click on the "Upload Template" area then choose the presentation you just saved in the last step or drag and drop your presentation into the area.

Screenshots Coming Soon

Step 4: Preview Template​

On the next screen, you will see a preview of your template.

  1. Check to make sure all the variables you wanted are listed under the variables column.
  • (Optional) - On this page, you can also create default entries for your template that you can change later when you are creating the deliverable.
  1. Once you've checked to make sure all your variable are set, go ahead and click the "Create Template" button on the bottom right corner (you may need to scroll)
Screenshots Coming Soon
tip
  • Tags can be very useful to help find certain templates, and Knowledgebase entries. Don't forget to utilize them! You can also always come back and add them in the future.
  • If your variables are not showing up, make sure you're using invisible rectangle shapes and that there are no spaces in your variable name.

Finished​

Congratulations on uploading your first presentation template. You should be able to see it on the template tab once you go back to the main page.