Slides

Slides connects your flow to Google Slides to work with presentations: create a new presentation, empty or as a copy of a template, look up its slides, get an image of a slide and replace text or images.

It is useful when you prepare presentations that always have the same structure and only the data changes, such as sales proposals, monthly reports or product sheets. You design the template once and the flow fills it in.

When to use it

• Generate a sales proposal for each customer from a template with placeholders such as {{customer}} or {{amount}}.
• Create the monthly results presentation every month by copying last month’s and updating the figures.
• Replace the logo in a presentation with the logo of the customer it is meant for.
• Get the image of a slide to send it by email or publish it.
• Read the content of a presentation so an agent can summarize it.

Configuration

You need a Google Slides credential, which connects by signing in with your Google account. When you create it you choose the access level: Create, Update, Delete, Read to create and change presentations, or Read Only if you only need to look them up. See Credentials.

Field	What it does
Credential (required)	The Google Slides credential used to access your account.
Operation	What the component does. See Operations. Default: Get Page.
Mode of Input	How you point to the presentation. By Selection shows Presentation File so you can pick it from your Google Drive; By Id shows Presentation ID to type its ID; By Url shows Presentation URL to paste its link. Default: By Selection.
Presentation File	With By Selection. The presentation you work with. Required in every operation except Create Presentation.
Presentation ID / Presentation URL	With By Id or By Url. The presentation’s ID or link. Required in every operation except Create Presentation.
Page Object ID	Only in Get Page and Get Thumbnail. The slide’s ID. You find it in the result of Get Slides.
Title Presentation	Only in Create Presentation, where it is needed. The title of the new presentation.
Search Text	Only in Replace Text. The text to look for in the presentation. It is case-sensitive.
Replace Text	Only in Replace Text. The text to put in its place.
Object ID to Replace	Only in Replace Image. The ID of the image you want to change. You find it in the result of Get Slides.
Replace Image URL	Only in Replace Image. The address of the new image. It must be reachable from the internet.

Operations

Operation	What it does
Get Page	Returns the content of one slide.
Get Thumbnail	Returns the link to an image of a slide.
Create Presentation	Creates a presentation with the given title. If you don’t point to any presentation, it creates an empty one; if you do, it creates a copy of it that you can use as a template.
Get Presentation	Returns the whole content of the presentation.
Get Slides	Returns a list of the presentation’s slides and the IDs of the elements on each one.
Replace Text	Replaces every occurrence of Search Text with Replace Text across the presentation.
Replace Image	Replaces one image with another. The new one takes the same space and is cropped from the center if its proportions differ.

Advanced options

Field	What it does
Max Results	Only in Get Slides. The maximum number of slides to return. Default: 10.

Output

The Data output returns the result of the operation. Create Presentation returns the new presentation’s ID (presentation_id), its title and its link (url). Get Slides returns one item per slide, with its ID (objectId) and the IDs of its elements (slide_object_id_1, slide_object_id_2…), which are the ones you need for Get Page, Get Thumbnail and Replace Image. Replace Text and Replace Image return Google Slides’ confirmation.

You can connect the result to an email component to send the presentation link, or to an agent. The component can also be connected to an Agent as a tool. See Tool Mode.

Example

A consultancy generates a proposal for each customer from its template.

1. In Google Slides, the proposal template contains the texts {{customer}} and {{amount}} where the data should go.
2. Add Slides with the Create Presentation operation, choose the template in Presentation File and write Proposal for followed by the customer’s name in Title Presentation. A copy is created.
3. Add a second Slides with Replace Text, Mode of Input set to By Id and the copy’s presentation_id in Presentation ID. Write {{customer}} in Search Text and the customer’s name in Replace Text.
4. Repeat the previous step for {{amount}} and send the proposal’s url link to the sales rep.

Good practices

• Use placeholders that are easy to spot in your templates, such as {{customer}}, so the searched text does not appear elsewhere in the presentation.
• Always work on a copy of the template. Replace Text and Replace Image change the presentation you point to.
• If you choose Read Only in the credential, only the operations that look things up will work.

Related components

• Drive File Manager: manages the files in your Google Drive.