How to use PowerPoint templates as theme in Data Studio? - powerpoint

I want to create a dashboard on Google Data Studio using a template provided by my organization but I can't find any helpful resource to do that so I'm tempted to think that's not even possible. I tried to use "Extract theme for image" option in GDS but didn't work properly since it just tries to emulate the colors from the image and not the template itself.
Any advice or suggestion will be much appreciated.

Unfortunately, there is no way to achieve this.
Although last versions of Google Data Studio contains resources to allow it to present dashboards as it were a presentation software, I don't think it is intended to offer advanced resources for this task, neighter make it compatible with other presentation softwares (especially if you're talking about third party software, as Microsoft PowerPoint).
The best you can do is to create your own dashboard, and try to mimic your company's provided template.

you could also use an image as theme, it will at least uses the colors of you company as you can see in the image below.
And that's unfortunally what you can do with it, and for powerpoint themes, you could also use Microsoft Power bi which is way more advanced that Google Data studio

Related

How to port existing vb .net office add-ins to work with office for mac?

I have an Office Word add-in that I wish to make it work with Office Word 2016 for Mac. I tried looking into official Microsoft documentation and could not find anything. I want to reuse as much code as possible while still having the extension to work with older versions of Word as well as Office Word 2016.
Is there any way to do this? Any help, even if it is something remotely related to this is appreciated.
TL;DR;
There is no way to do that.
Microsoft has bet on a new technology suite also called Office add-ins but web based. They are compatible with Mac. The old COM based approach (on which VSTO .NET add-in are built on) are legacy.
There is no way to reuse .NET code with this new technology, except of course to port business logic to the web server (which serves the web based add-in).
More reading on the comparison with the two add-ins generation: see this article I wrote
I second Benoit's answer. In addition, Not sure how complex is your add-in in terms of interactions with the document content, or if its a service that then inserts or imports data from a backend. Depending on that you will have more reusable code.
I would recommend you to do a full analysis on what APIs you need for your add-in to work properly. The new model offers big value with both supporting multiplatform and an easier deployment model. It also provides many rich APIs you can use, however the API depth its still not as rich as VSTO. Our goal is to get there.
I would be curious to understand if there are any gaps on you migration analysis.
thx!

Online Powerpoint Slide Editor

Is there anything like Google Slides, which can be integrated into the app we are building?
If not, then atleast a way to programmatically import the ppt file, and navigate to the editor for editing?
Any suggestions will be appreciated...
There's an official powerpoint online editor now. You could theoretically put an iframe linking to this page. It seems to require a 365 or Microsoft account, though.
I had a similar requirement and have tested both the online offerings of Microsoft Office (SharePoint, One Drive) and Google docs. However, I finally decided on Only Office (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). The reasons for this were:
The Google and Microsoft offerings didn't (AFAIAK) have the fine tuned security I needed for document editing and access via their various API (i.e. I needed to be able to prevent downloads of documents but allow editing)
Google and Microsoft require sign-in from their respective platforms to use these. This was a UX problem for my project.
Depending on the specific requirement Only Office has the Document Server on a GNU APGL v3 licence. You may need to buy a licence but worth a check.
Their repo is here:
https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/

Editor for end user documentation in C# WinForm app

I'm developing a WinForm app in c# 4.0 and would like other (non-developer) colleagues to contribute writing a context sensitive end-user helpfile. First I thought I could use "HTML Help Workshop" from Microsoft, but it seems outdated (Vista and Windows 7 not supported).
Then I've looked at Sandcastle, but the documentation is lacking and I wonder if it is suitable for non-technical users to write end-user documentation.
So I read about RoboHelp, but it's way to expensive for me.
I'm getting lost in all the information that is available about helpfiles. Can someone help give some best practices or information on what tools to use and what output format I should target (still chm or other).
Great question. I like your idea of non-developers contributing to the end-user documentation.
This idea might motivate users and testers of your application to easily contribute to the documentation.
The first thing that comes to my mind, is using a some sort of wiki engine. You could build a simple function in your WinForm application, that fires up a browser and directs in to the wiki. You could use the context from which it is called to build up an url; e.g. http://dev-wiki.mycompany.com/LoginForm?action=edit. Here the name of the form ("LoginForm") is used in the url of a wiki page.
Alternatively, you could simply use the embedded web browser control for WinForms to access the wiki. That would look something like:
var url = GetWikiUrl(myForm);
browserControl.Navigate(url);
This would be very easy to embed in your application.
In a controlled (office) environment, this would be very easy to set up. In you production environment it might be a bit more difficult, but still doable. It might leverage some end-user contributions too.
For writing documentation, I use sphinx.
It lets you document in plain text and has various output formats (chm, html, pdf etc.).
Some of these (chm, html) can be used as context-sensitive help sources.
However simple, the sphinx user-interface (text editor and make file) might not be suitable for non-technical users.
I would recommend to use Help+Manual for creating CHM documentation. It's similar to MS Word and any PC user can start to contribute doc development after short education.
But this tool isn't free :(

Automatic download/upload

We are going to develop a client-server application with web interface which will store office documents on server.
When we use browser as a client we need to perform these three steps to edit a document:
download document to the local machine;
open it in office program and edit;
upload document to the server.
It is very inconvenient. Sometimes it is hard to find where a document was downloaded to, when we need to upload it. Customers will also forget to upload document after editing.
Is there any way or technology to upload document automatically?
Or just any ideas how to make this process more convenient.
Thanks in advance!
I would, suggest, if applicable to store all documents as HTML then allowing editing in a web page powered by CKEditor or a similar tool.
If your documents must be in another format, like Office formats, you might start thinking at Office 365, or use ActiveX controls in your web application, something I believe should be deprecated but works in small (better restricted) enterprise environments.
These are just a couple of ideas.

What Software Do You Use To Create Sitemaps / Site Structure For Large Sites?

Just wondering what software you use to create a visual sitemap / site structure representation before you start big sites?
I am looking to map out a large site, but cannot find any good software to help me map the site visually (And in pages/categories)..
Maybe SketchFlow http://electricbeach.org/?p=145 ? which is included in the Expression Blend Trial http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92E1DB7A-5D36-449B-8C6B-D25F078F3609&displaylang=en
I strongly suggest taking a look at this tool: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups
The Balsamiq tool is the best for doing mockups (i assume this is what you are referring too when talking about sitemaps before you start...). With this software you can quickly generate a working wireframe of what ever you are creating. So much functionality that you can actually share it with your client to get some good sign offs prior to typing the first bit of code.
Very powerful!
And the other one...just shown at the last MIX09 is SketchFlow. Couldn't remember it to save my life. This is a WAY COOL tool for site maps and UI mock up. I was trying to find you the actual MIX presentation as it is super cool to watch. But here are some YouTube videos of that presentation from a user perspective I guess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsAZjb7FKXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ErrS68YMM
Check it out!
update...found the SketchFlow video!!! http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C01F
Great keynote from there too: http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/KEY01
I know this is an old question, but for others who find this via search, I personally love mocking my websites up with mind mapping tools. I've tried several but my favorite was MindNode for Mac and Xmind for Windows.
XMind free download:
http://www.xmind.net/
MindNode free download:
https://mindnode.com/
I've also tried MindMeister which works just as well as other mind mapping tools and is hosted for you so you can access your mind maps anywhere. However, MindMeister only allows you three maps (currently) without upgrading to a paid subscription.
Another that I've worked with is mockflow.com which is great for mocking up websites with all their features and buttons and even making clickable navigation. They have a free version, but again it's very limited without upgrading to a paid version.
I'm using Slickplan. This cloud based app allows me to have access to my projects from different machines regardless of their operating systems. All I need is one of the leading web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).
With Slickplan you can create visual sitemaps from scratch or you can use Site Crawler to import your existing website to visualize and reorganize its structure.
Of course you can always export your projects to the XML format, and use the exported file to create pages and menu systems inside some popular content management system - Slickplan provides plugins for WordPress, Joomla, concrete5 and a few more.

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