What does an SEO agency gearing up for a client review, an advertiser trying to showcase media to potential buyers, a business head trying to prove his worth to an investor, and an  in-house analyst trying to streamline ecommerce operations have in common? The heartburn of having to put together a meaningful story from the exhaustive data in their Google Analytics account. First, pulling out the right information and tying it together in a neat presentation for the report is at least a half day’s work (on a good day). And since website information changes rapidly, the report could get obsolete before it even gets presented. And finally, the routine of pulling out fresh data, exporting it to Excel to run some numbers and putting that back into PowerPoint is just downright boring.

But what if you did not have to do any of this? If you could just create your presentation once and have it updated in real-time? Sounds unbelievable, right? In this post we’ll show you how oomfo can ensure that your analytics presentations are always up-to-date, every time!

oomfo makes sure that your presentation has the latest information every time you run a slide show, through a connector which logs in to Google Analytics for you and retrieves all the relevant data. You wouldn’t ordinarily have to worry too much about the connectors after the initial setup, unless you have some legacy data sources that need customization and inputs from your IT team. Anyway, we have a detailed explanation of what connectors are and how they do what they do towards the end of this post.

By following the simple steps in this post, you will be able to create a scalable PowerPoint presentation that presents live Google Analytics data every time you run it.

Getting Started

To begin with, you will need:

1. PowerPoint 2003 / XP / 2007 / 2010. (Only 32-bit version for PowerPoint 2010).
2. The latest oomfo add-in installed. Get the latest version of oomfo here.
3. The oomfo connector for Google Analytics. Download the Google Analytics connector here.
4. Your Google Analytics Profile ID. You can get your Profile ID here AFTER logging into your Google Analytics account.
5. An active internet connection when viewing the presentation, to get the latest data.
6. A linux server to host the connector. Your IT department can help you with this, or you can find more information here.
7. You will also need to enable cURL on the Linux server. You can find more information on this here.

Which charts does the Google Analytics connector provide out of the box?

Using the Google Analytics connector provided, you can create 8 different kinds of charts. To make them easier to refer and use, we’ve named each one with an alias:

• visitorsbycount: Number of visitors, sorted by their visit count.
• visitorsbydate: Total number of visitors for every day of the period you specify.
• pageviewsbydate: Total number of pageviews for every day of the period you specify.
• visitorsbysource: Number of visitors, grouped by the source from which they come from.
• visitorsbycountry: Number of visitors, grouped by their country.
• visitortype: Number of visitors, categorized by New Visitors and Returning Visitors.
• ismobile: Number of visitors who come from a mobile device versus from a desktop/laptop.
• exitpagepath: The number of visitors who leave your site, grouped by the exit page (last page they were on before leaving).

These calls provide the metrics that SEO specialists require most often. Now that we got that covered, let’s jump right in to making a slide deck with real-time Google Analytics.

Creating the charts in your presentation

Let us start off with the visitorsbycount call. You will be required to use your Google Analytics login credentials to use this connector. We’ll show you how and where to enter them.

1. Open PowerPoint, and click on the Insert tab. On the right hand side of the ribbon should see the cluster of oomfo buttons.
   
2. Click on the Insert Chart button. An oomfo window should open.
3. Select Single Series from the drop down, and select 3D column chart.

   

4. In the Chart Data tab, click on External Data Source > XML from File/URL.You will need to enter the connector’s URL along with some parameters in the top textbox. Now let us construct this URL.
5. The connector’s URL should read http://yoursite.com/path_to_file/GoogleAnalytics.php. Replace yoursite.com with the URL of the server where the connector is hosted. Make sure you get the correct URL. This URL now needs parameters according to which it will query and provide the right data for your presentation.
6. For the visitorsbycount call, you will need to provide the following parameters:
   

   PARAMETER	VALUE
   email	Google Analytics email ID
   password	Google Analytics email password
   profile_id	Google Analytics Profile ID (sample — ga:123456)
   type	visitorsbycount
   start-date	YYYY-MM-DD
   end-date	YYYY-MM-DD

   Here is how you can configure the parameters and the URL:

   http://yoursite.com/path_to_file/GoogleAnalytics.php?email=youremail@abc.com&password=yourpassword&profile_id=ga:yourprofileid&type=visitorsbycount&start-date=yyyy-mm-dd&end-date=yyyy-mm-dd

   Please notice the ? and the &; it is required exactly in the way shown. Replace youremail@abc.com, yourpassword and yourprofileid with the email address and password you use to access your Google Analytics, and your profile ID respectively.

7. Now click on Load, and you would get the data in the text area below. Click on OK > Finish.

   

There you have it! A live count of your visitors sorted by the number of visits in just seven steps!

But wait- you have 7 calls more to play around with. For each call, you would only have to modify the parameters in the final URL.

Details of each call

visitorsbycount (single-series)

Sample query:

visitorsbydate (single-series)

Sample query:

pageviewsbydate (single-series)

Sample query:

visitorsbysource (single-series)

Sample query:

visitorsbycountry (single-series)

Sample query:

visitortype (single-series)

Sample query:

ismobile (single-series)

Sample query:

exitpagepath (single-series)

Sample query:

custom (single-series)

We wanted to provide you an option to create a chart using your own dimensions and metrics. The Google Analytics Query Explorer provides you an amazing way to try out newer combinations. To create such a custom call:

Sample query:

Quick tip:

If you’d rather not enter your email, password and profile id every time, you can enter these in the GoogleAnalytics.php file that you’ve downloaded. You can open the file in any plain text editor, and add the email address on line 10, the password on line 11 and the profile id on line 12. These have to be written within the quotes provided. And then un-comment the 3 lines by deleting the 2 slashes at the beginning of each line.

After doing this, you would not have to write these in your query string everytime. However, be aware that your credentials are stored in plain-text for anyone to see.

The Magic Connectors

oomfo can automatically pull data from any data source that can be accessed from your browser, be it SalesForce, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Twitter, SharePoint, your CRM or ERP system, or even local files. All one needs to have, is a connector. A connector is something that talks to the data source, retrieves data, and presents it in a structure that oomfo understands.

Now for the difficult part. The connector is a web page (with programming instructions) that can talk to various other systems on web or your enterprise network like Twitter, SalesForce, Google Analytics, Google Docs, your ERP or CRM. If login credentials are required for any of these services, then these will have to be provided to the connectors. It’s like the connector is logging instead of you, getting the latest data, converting it into XML format and updating it in PowerPoint, while you are enjoying your siesta or the game. This will happen automatically every time the presentation is viewed as a slideshow.

Now before you start sending emails to your IT team, let us quickly tell you that we provide the connector for Google Analytics, SalesForce, and have done it for Twitter earlier. However, if you have a proprietary ERP or CRM system or one hidden behind your firewall, you might have to get your IT team involved.

Summing it up

In this blog post we saw how to create live charts in PowerPoint using your Google Analytics data. If you understand PHP, you can open the connector provided and see how we connected to the Google Analytics API, retrieved data and built the XML. The XML is based on the FusionCharts format. In the coming posts, we will talk more about how the connector was built and the programming side of things.

If you want more oomfo goodness, you can read more about the connector for Twitter and the connector for SalesForce.

Before every week’s sales performance review with your manager, you need to present your SalesForce numbers in the best light possible. You go to your SalesForce account, set some filters and run a report on those filters. Then you export it as an Excel document and import the data in PowerPoint. Finally, you create charts to suit to the meeting’s agenda. You do this boring and time-consuming task every Friday, before your weekly meeting. Haven’t you had enough of it? Don’t you think you spend more time creating reports and charts, and less time actually selling?

You sure do. In this post, we’ll teach how to use oomfo to automate all of this for you. You create the charts once, connect them to SalesForce and never ever have to update it again. Yes, you will have live charts with up-to-date data every time you go into your meeting.

Sounds hard to believe, but let us show you how.

The Magic Connectors

oomfo can automatically pull data from any data source that can be accessed from your browser, be it SalesForce, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Twitter, SharePoint, your CRM or ERP system, or even local files. All one needs to have, is a connector. A connector is something that talks to the data source, retrieves data, and presents it in a structure that oomfo understands.

Now for the difficult part. The connector is a web page (with programming instructions) that can talk to various other systems on web or your enterprise network like Twitter, SalesForce, Google Analytics, Google Docs, your ERP or CRM. If login credentials are required for any of these services, then these will have to be provided to the connectors. It’s like the connector is logging instead of you, getting the latest data, converting it into XML format and updating it in PowerPoint, while you are enjoying your siesta or the game. This will happen automatically every time the presentation is viewed as a slideshow.

Now before you start sending emails to your IT team, let us quickly tell you that we provide the connector for SalesForce, and have done it for Twitter earlier. We will provide a connector for Google Analytics very soon. However, if you have a proprietary ERP or CRM system or one hidden behind your firewall, you might have to get your IT team involved.

So let’s dive in to the SalesForce connector, which is written in PHP and accesses the SalesForce API.

How to get started

To begin with, you need:

1. PowerPoint 2003 / XP / 2007 / 2010. (Only 32-bit version for PowerPoint 2010).
2. The latest oomfo add-in installed. Get the latest version of oomfo.
3. Download the SalesForce connector.
4. Get your SalesForce Security Token from My Personal Information > Reset Security Token. The token will be sent to your email which you use to login into SalesForce.
5. When viewing the presentation, you will also require an active internet connection to get the latest data.
6. Request your IT department to host the connector on a Linux server. More info here.
7. Request your IT department to enable cURL on the Linux server. More info here.

Charts provided by the SalesForce Connector

Using the SalesForce connector provided, you can create 5 different kinds of charts:

• LeadsByStatus: This call gives you the count of Leads sorted by Status, and shows the Annual Revenue generated by Contacted and Closed Leads in the tooltips.
• PipeLineByStageAndType: This call gives you the Stages as Categories, Revenue as Values and Type as grouped within Stages.
• TotalPipeline: This call gives the breakup of the Pipeline by Stage.
• TopAccounts: This call gives you the annual revenue of top ‘x’ number of accounts.
• TopNewProspects: This call shows the top ‘x’ new prospects ordered by expected revenue.

These calls provide the metrics that a sales department would require the most.

Let’s see the charts in action

We will be trying out the LeadsByStatus call. You will be required to use your SalesForce login credentials to use this connector. We’ll show you how and where to write them.

Start PowerPoint, click on the Insert tab, and on the right hand side of the ribbon you would see the cluster of oomfo buttons.

Click on the Insert Chart button. In the oomfo window, select Single Series from the drop down, and select 3D column chart.

In the Chart Data tab, click on External Data Source > XML from File/URL.

You would be writing the connector’s URL along with the parameters in the textbox to the right. The general structure of the URL would be URL path + username + passwordandsecuritytoken + call type + parameters  and values required for each call. We will now see how to construct this properly.

To authenticate this connector with your SalesForce account, follow this pattern:

If your password is mypassword

And your security token is XXXXXXXXXX

For this connector, you must enter mypasswordXXXXXXXXXX in place of the passwordandsecuritytoken above.

Paste the connector’s URL in the textbox. It should be http://yoursite.com/path_to_file/SalesForce.php. Here yoursite.com is just a placeholder and should be replaced by the URL of your server, to which your IT team has copied the connector file. Make sure you get the correct URL. This URL now needs parameters according to which it will query and return the data.

For the LeadsByStatus call, we require the following parameters:

Here is how you would configure the URL:

Please notice the ?; it is required exactly in the way shown. Now click on Load, and you would get the data in the text area below. Click on OK > Finish.

There you have it! A live count of the count of Leads sorted by Status! These values would keep updating each time you start your presentation.

You can try changing the chart type from 2D Pie to 3D Column. Just do it from the Chart Type tab.

Now you realize that oomfo provides you much more flexibility to manipulate your data and see it in a different light.

You have 4 calls more to play around with.

Details of each call

LeadsByStatus (single-series)

Sample query:

PipeLineByStageAndType (multi-series)

Sample query:

TotalPipeLine (single-series)

Sample query:  

TopAccounts (single-series)

Sample query:  

TopNewProspects (single-series)

sample query:  

Summing it up

In this blog post we saw how to create live charts in PowerPoint using your SalesForce data. If you understand PHP, you can open the connector provided and see how we connected to the SalesForce API, retrieved data and built the XML. The XML is based on the FusionCharts format. In the coming posts, we will talk more about how the connector was built and the programming side of things.

If you want more oomfo goodness, you can read more about the connector for Twitter.

You have been creating charts in PowerPoint for a long time. You create a presentation, insert a chart, write or copy-paste the data into spreadsheet, customize some settings and you are done. And, it has worked perfectly for you till now. Hasn’t it?

But what if the data changes every day or week, or heck every minute? Right now, just before you deliver the presentation, you update the data by copying it from your source (like your sales data from SalesForce or other CRM if you are a sales guy, analytics data from Twitter or Google Analytics if you are a marketing guy), edit the chart and paste the new data again? This is repetitive, boring and takes up innumerable hours of your life. We say, read this blog post and learn how oomfo can automate this entire process for you. You’ll be able to build the charts once, connect it to your live data and never ever have to update it again.

Sounds hard to believe, but let us show you how.

The Magic Connectors

oomfo can automatically pull data from any data source that can be accessed from your browser – be it SalesForce, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Twitter, SharePoint, your CRM or ERP system, or even local files. All one needs to have, is a connector. A connector is something which would talk to the data source, retrieve data, and present it in a structure that oomfo understands.

Now for the difficult part. The connector is a web page (with programming instructions) that can talk to various other systems on web or your enterprise network like Twitter, SalesForce, Google Analytics, Google Docs, your ERP or CRM. If login credentials are required for any of these services, then these will have to be provided to the connectors. It’s like the connector is logging instead of you, getting the latest data, converting it into XML format and updating it in PowerPoint, but while you are enjoying the siesta or the game. This will happen automatically every time the presentation is viewed as a slideshow.

Now before you start sending emails to your IT team, let us quickly mention that we intend to provide ready-made connectors for many popular systems like Twitter, SalesForce, Google Analytics. However, if you have a proprietary ERP or CRM system or one hidden behind your firewall, you might to get your IT team involved.

The most compelling benefit of having such connectors is that you need to create both the connector and chart only once(we’ll show you how), and the latest data will automatically be shown on your slides every time you run the slideshow. Now you don’t need to copy-paste your data in PowerPoint whenever it changes.

In this blog post, we will build an example that marketing guys would love to use – building live Twitter analytics charts within their presentations that are always updated. We will show you how to pull vital data from Twitter and other sources related to Twitter accounts. This connector is written in PHP, and would be accessing the Twitter API. We have also provided the connector as a download, so that you can start using it right away.

How to get started

To begin with, you would need to have:

1. PowerPoint 2003 / XP / 2007 / 2010. (Only 32-bit version for PowerPoint 2010).
2. The latest oomfo add-in installed. Get the latest version of oomfo.
3. Download the Twitter connector.
4. You will also require an active internet connection to query the API.
5. Request your IT department to host the connector on a Linux server. More info here.
6. Request your IT department to enable cURL on the Linux server. More info here.

Charts provided by the Twitter Connector

Using the Twitter connector provided, you can create 5 different kinds of charts:

• Followers and Following: This call gives you the followers and following count of one or more Twitter handles you that ask for. It allows you to create a single-series chart if only 1 handle is given, or a multi-series chart if more than 1 handles are given.
• Count: This call gives you the number of times a term (or more than one term) has been tweeted in a particular time period. It returns data for a single-series chart.
• Historical data: This call is quite useful. It gives you the number of times a term has been tweeted over a period of time. You can get the data split into time intervals also. For example, you could check for occurrences of newyork in the last 30 days, with individual counts on each of the last 30 days. It returns data for a multi-series chart.
• Followers’ history: This call gives you the count of followers for one of more Twitter handles for the last 14 days. It returns data for a multi-series chart.
• Rank: This call calculates the relative rank of one or more Twitter handles among all Twitter users, taking into consideration the tweets, retweets, following count and a lot more parameters.

These calls provide most of the Twitter analytics web marketers need.

Let’s see the charts in action

We will be trying out the Followers and Following call. You would not be required to share your Twitter login credentials to use this connector.

Start PowerPoint, click on the Insert tab, and on the right hand side of the ribbon you would see the cluster of oomfo buttons.

Click on the Insert Chart button. In the oomfo window, select Single Series from the drop down, and select 3D column chart.

In the Chart Data tab, click on External Data Source > XML from File/URL.

You would be writing the connector’s URL along with the parameters in the textbox to the right. The general structure of the URL would be URL path + call type + parameters and values required for each call. We will now see how to construct this properly.

Paste the connector’s URL in the textbox. It should be http://yoursite.com/path_to_file/Twitter.php. Here yoursite.com/path_to_file is just a placeholder and should be replaced by the URL of your server, to which your IT team has copied the connector file. Make sure you get the correct URL. This URL now needs parameters according to which it will query and return the data.

For the Followers and Following call, we require the following parameters:

At least one of followers or following is required.

So, let’s say we want to get the followers and following count of the Twitter handle barackobama in our chart. Here is how you would configure the URL:

Please notice the ? and the &; they are required exactly in the way shown. Now click on the Load button, and you would get the generated XML data in the text area below. Click on OK > Finish.

There you have it! A live count of the followers and following of a Twitter handle! These values would keep updating each time you start your presentation, till infinity and beyond!

Compare multiple Twitter handles

To make things more interesting, try adding more Twitter handles. Just separate them with a comma. First of all, try changing the chart from Single Series to Multi Series.

Then modify the above URL to twitter_handle=barackobama,SenJohnMcCain,algore. Click on Load and go back to your slide to see a multi-series chart.

That’s it!

So that was about one of the five calls. There are still 4 more for you to play around with, each with more interesting data than the other.

Details of each call

Followers and Following

At least one of followers or following is required

Sample query:

Count of a term over a period of time (single-series)

Sample query:

Historical data (multi-series)

Sample query:

Get followers count of a user over the last 14 days (multi-series)

Sample query:

Get the relative rank of a Twitter user, with respect to amount of retweets and followings (single series)

Sample query:

Fun!

In this blog post we just explained how to use the provided Twitter connector. If you understand PHP, you can open the code and see how we connected to the Twitter API, retrieved data and built the XML. The XML is based on the FusionCharts format. In the coming posts, we will talk more about how the connector was built and the programming side of things.

All the charts in oomfo are animated and have been known to create a great first impression. But that’s not all. Using the Styles feature in oomfo, you can effortlessly create your own animation styles and apply them to any chart element. Your caption can fade in to visibility, the axis labels can travel across the chart and the divisional lines scale up to size. In this post, we will take a detailed look at creating two different animation styles – an elegant one for the column chart and a jazzy one for the line chart.

Creating an elegant animation for the column chart

The definition of elegance varies from person to person. For me, it is scaling the divisional lines at the back of the chart horizontally to their full size. This, of course, is in addition to the default animation the chart has.

First up, create a simple column chart. Click on the Insert chart button in the oomfo ribbon to bring up the oomfo chart builder. Go ahead and select the 2D column chart.

We will stick with the default data itself for the chart, and head straight to the Chart Cosmetics tab to create the animation style. The custom animation, as I pointed out earlier, is created using the Styles feature of oomfo. In the bottom part of the Chart Cosmetics tab, you will see the heading Customize Individual Chart Elements with icons to create, apply and edit styles. This is going to be your bread and butter for all types of custom animation and styles. Click on Create Styles to get started.

This will bring up the Create a Style dialog box with tabs to create different kinds of styles – animation, font, blur, bevel, glow and shadow. In this case, all we need to concern ourselves is with the animation tab which is the default one.

Since we are creating an x-scale animation effect, select the animation type as, well, x-scale. The Start from parameter allows you to set up a sequence of animation for different chart elements and the duration parameter specifies the time in seconds the animation will take. For example, you have created an animation style for the caption which starts at 0 (i.e. as soon as the chart appears) and has a duration of 1s. You have another animation style for the data labels but want that to start only after the captions have finished animating. So you will set the Start from for the data labels as 1. The easing defines the style in which the animation will happen, for lack of a better word. The best way to understand them is actually play around with them. The default values for all three parameters work well in our case. Finally, save the style with a name and click Ok.

Now it’s time to apply the animation to the divisional lines. Click on the Apply Styles button next to the Create Styles button. This will open the Apply Styles dialog box with a list of all the chart elements and the styles you have created. You can select chart elements one-by-one and apply any number of styles you would like to. In our case, this is pretty simple.

Click Apply. You will be able to see a preview of the style you just applied in the Preview pane. If you don’t like it or need to finetune it, click on Edit Styles and modify it as per your requirements. For now, click Finish, position the chart in the slide and hit slideshow. Then sit back and enjoy the elegant custom animation you have just created.

How about adding another elegant style to the chart? Let’s add a fade-in effect to the horizontal grid at the back of the chart. Following the same route, go to the Create Styles dialog box and create a Transparency Fading animation.

Again, the default values for the other parameters will work just fine. So save the style and move on to applying it to the horizontal grid.

Go to the slideshow and check out how your combination of two animation styles looks. Quite elegant, don’t you think?

Creating a jazzy effect for the line chart

Time for some fun and lively animation effects. How does creating a line chart and making the anchors bounce into their positions sound to you? Yes, that’s right. You can easily do that too using oomfo. Let’s get started.

The first natural step is creating a line chart. I have used a single-series line chart to keep things clean and simple.

Just like in the example earlier, head to the Create a Style dialog box. Since the anchors would be traveling (bouncing) vertically to their place, the animation style would be Y Position. You can create a horizontal bounce effect too but that just doesn’t look natural. The default for Start and Duration work fine. You can make the bounce effect faster by reducing the duration to 1s but anything more than 2s will be a bit too slow. And to actually create the bounce effect, all you need to do is set the Easing to Bounce.

Save the style and move on to the Apply Styles dialog box. Select ANCHORS from the chart element list and apply the bounce effect to it. You are done. The line chart’s anchors are now ready to bounce into place as you will see in the preview pane as soon as you hit Apply.

Finish the chart and hit slideshow.

That’s how easy it is to create custom animation for different chart elements in oomfo. Play around with the range of styles, the different easing effects, set up different animation sequences and find that perfect animation style for yourself.

Your presentations don’t just convey information, they convey your personality too. You could keep it simple, add a touch of elegance or completely jazz it up! And whatever personality your presentations are conveying, wouldn’t you want your charts to convey that too? Yes sir. With the latest addition to oomfo, you can now match the charts to your PowerPoint theme in seconds. In this post, you will see how you can do this in a step-by-step example.

To start with, chose a theme for your presentation. I chose the Median theme because it looks elegant, thus conveying my personality

Now go ahead and insert an oomfo chart. Go to the Insert tab > oomfo ribbon > Insert chart to bring up the oomfo chart builder. I have inserted the single-series column chart with its default data and settings into the slide. Position it the way you like it in the slide.

As you can see, the chart uses the default oomfo look which is pretty different from what we have in the theme. Time to give the chart a makeover. To match it with the presentation theme, bring up the context menu (right-clik on the chart) and go to oomfo > Match Presentation Theme.

This will bring up the simple but highly effective Match Presentation theme dialog box. There are threee things you can select – background color, font color, font face and size. As you will see, the colors you have for the background and font have been auto-picked from the theme. You will have seven options that you can choose from.

Select the light brown color for the background (the rightmost color in the palette) and see how it affects the chart.

Pretty effective, huh? Even the colors for the columns have been picked up intelligently from the theme itself to go along well with the background. They are the same colors that the columns would have had if it was a PowerPoint chart.

With a dark background we need a light color for the font. How about white itself?

Looks like we are all set. Hit slideshow and see how the chart looks.

Exactly what we were looking for, isn’t it? And all it took was two clicks in the Match Presentation Theme dialog box. Moreover, when you go back to your presentation to create more slides, the charts will be using this theme automatically.

Now that your chart matches the theme, what if you wanted to customize it further? Pretty simple, just go to edit chart and customize whatever you want to. To start with, let’s see how to remove the border around the chart.

Select the chart in the slide and click on the Edit chart button in the oomfo ribbon. Go to the Chart Cosmetics tab. You will see that the theme name is displayed as PowerPoint theme in the drop-down. Click on Customize.

The Theme Customization dialog box has a lot of tabs with a lot of options. To remove the border, all you need to do is uncheck the Show Border box in the Background tab that comes up by default.

In the slideshow mode, you will see that the chart blends excellently with the background.

Now how about some advanced customization? Let’s do something stylish. How about adding a glow effect to the divisional lines in the chart – the ones at $100K, $200K etc.

We will have to create a style for it. To do that, go to Edit Chart > Chart Cosmetics tab and click on the Create Styles button.

This will open the Create a Style dialog box with a lot of different styles – animation, font, blur, bevel, blur and shadow. For each of these different kinds of styles, there are a lot of parameters using which you can define the style.

Since we are going to create a Glow style, hit the Glow tab and define the style the way you want to. After you are done, give it a name and save it. Click OK on the Create a Style dialog box to go back to the Chart Cosmetics tab.

Now that our style has been created, we have to go ahead and apply the style to the divisional lines. Click on the Apply Styles button.

This will open the Apply Styles dialog box with the list of all chart elements and all the styles that have been created. Select DIVLINES from the chart element and apply the Glow Style to it.

And that’s it. Go the slideshow to see your divisional lines looking stylish with the glow.

That’s how easy it is to match the chart to your PowerPoint theme, and even make further customizations to it. So go ahead and let your charts speak your personality too!

Many a times, you need to export your PowerPoint presentations as web pages and put them out for the world to see. PowerPoint recognizes this need and provides you with fairly comprehensive export options, but they come with their own set of problems. In this post, we will take a look at how they work and the issues you will face. We will also take a look at a new approach to exporting slides – using oomfo. Yes, using oomfo you can export your slides to web pages, one at a time, whether they contain the oomfo charts or not.

Exporting slides to web pages using PowerPoint

We will take a look at the two options PowerPoint provides to export slides as web pages. I will be using PowerPoint 2007 to take you through the post. PowerPoint 2003 provides the same options as well but PowerPoint 2010 does not have the export options at all.

I have created a sample PPT using a readymade theme.

I know the title of the presentation is not the most ideal way to get started but then we have a different agenda here, don’t we?

To export the presentation, we will head to the Save As option in the Office button. Go to Save As > Other Formats.

Set Save As Type to Web Page from the drop-down and enter a name for the web page to be created. Click Save when you are done.

This will create an HTML web page and a folder called _files with images, stylesheets and JavaScript files. Open the web page in Internet Explorer and you will see that the presentation comes up pretty neatly.

There is a navigation bar on the left to jump to slides. You will also see navigation on the bottom to go to the outline mode, slideshow or use the Next/Previous buttons to navigate through the slides. Pretty good for a start.

Now how about opening the web page in a different browser. Let’s try Mozilla Firefox, the world’s most popular browser.

Oops, so Firefox says it cannot support the presentation you just exported. Just to reiterate, Firefox is the world’s most widely used browser. The warning is caused by the proprietary objects that are present in the HTML output and will cause an issue in every browser except Internet Explorer. Proceed anyway.

You will see that Firefox displayed the warning with good reason. The presentation is pretty messed up when it finally opens. The navigation on the bottom is gone, as are the options to hit the Slideshow or outline mode.

Luckily PowerPoint provides another option to export the slides which can rid us of the warning, and enable the navigation in browsers other than IE. When you select Save as Type > Web page under the Save As option, you will get an option to publish the presentation. Click the button.

You will get a Publish as Web page dialog box with a number of options. Select publish the complete presentation and browser support for all browsers.

You will also see a button called Web Options. The dialog box that it opens gives you control over the slide navigation, animation, browser support and fonts to be used.

The most important tab in my opinion is the Pictures tab where you can set the screen size for the target monitor. Since the slides were occupying less than half the screen on my monitor in Firefox, I will choose a bigger screen size this time.

Going back to the Publish as Web Page dialog box, hit Publish. This will open the presentation in the browser. In Internet Explorer, it will look similar to what it looked with the Save As Web page option. Let’s head to Firefox where it was causing a lot of trouble and see how it looks there.

While the control over the resolution allows us to use a larger part of the screen and the navigation controls are present, the rest of it has gone for a toss. The background looks stretched and so does the text. And to top it all, a simple heading has been converted to an image.

It means that the presentation cannot be accessed using a text-based browser, a screen reader or a text-to-speech program. Also, there is no alternative text to describe the images for those who cannot see the images due to disability or technology.

Now that we have taken a detailed look at the issues PowerPoint’s export option has and its non-availability in PowerPoint 2010, let’s take a look at how oomfo comes to the rescue.

Exporting slides to web pages using oomfo’s export capabilities

To export a slide in PowerPoint with oomfo, go to Insert tab > oomfo ribbon > Export > Export slide as Web page.

As soon as you select the option, oomfo will export the slide and ask you whether you want to see it immediately in the browser. On clicking yes, here’s what the second slide will look like no matter what browser you are using:

All the content on the slides is in text itself and can be picked up by a screen reader.

Quick and neat, isn’t it? To be fair to PowerPoint, oomfo has a limitation too. As of now, you can export only the current slide as a web page and not the entire presentation that PowerPoint’s export allows you to do.

While at it, we forgot that oomfo is actually a charting plug-in for PowerPoint. So let’s take a look at how the export works with a slide having an oomfo chart in it. In a new presentation, click the Insert chart button in the oomfo ribbon to bring up the oomfo chart builder.

Create the chart and position it the way you want.

Export it using the Export Chart button – this will create an HTML web page and a _files folder having the chart swf file and some JavaScript files necessary to render the chart. Open the web page in any browser to see the animated chart live in action.

The chart is interactive as well. You can hover over the columns to see details about them in the tooltips. You can also hide an entire data series by clicking on its icon in the legend.

Like what you see? Download oomfo and give the export capabilites a spin.

And if you already have, do let us know if see yourself using it for exporting only charts or general PowerPoint slides, one at a time, as well? oomfo is still in beta and we are looking for all the feedback we can get.

The waterfall chart is also known as the cascade or bridge chart. It used a lot by the finance, business analyst and sales fraternities. However there’s a small problem – PowerPoint forgot to ship them. The only way you can create waterfall charts in PowerPoint is by manipulating the stacked charts, but they turn out to be very basic. And take a lot of time. In this post, we will take a look at what the waterfall chart is and learn how we can create powerful ones in minutes using oomfo.

What is a waterfall chart?

A typical waterfall chart is used to show how an initial value increases and decreases by a series of intermediate values, leading to a final value. A simple example of this is the inventory audit of men’s t-shirts in a retail outlet.

As you can see, the initial and the final values are represented by whole columns, while the intermediate values are denoted by floating columns.

Waterfall charts are also used to show the contribution of parts of a whole, especially when there are negative contributors as well. A good example of this is showing the revenue and costs of a company to come to the final profit.

Creating a waterfall chart in oomfo

In this post, we will take a detailed look at how to create the company profit waterfall chart using oomfo. Here we go.

1. We will be using the oomfo chart builder to create our waterfall chart. If you are on Windows 2003, go to Insert Menu > oomfo > Insert chart to launch the builder. If you are on Windows 2007 or 2010, go to the Insert tab and click on the Insert Chart button in the oomfo ribbon.
   
   
2. In the chart builder that comes up, select chart type as Single Series from the drop-down and then select the waterfall chart from the list of the charts.
   
   
3. Now let’s enter the data for the chart. For this go to the Chart Data tab either by directly clicking on the tab name or clicking the Next button from the current Chart Selection tab. In the data grid in the Chart Data tab, enter the figures for revenue and cost. Remember to prefix the values with a ‘-’ sign for everything negative, which in this case are the fixed and variable costs.
   
   
   As soon as you hit Apply, you will see that the chart is displayed with the data you entered in the Preview pane. The positive figures add to the original value and the negative figures subtract from it to come to the total, which you can see is automatically added as a column called Total at the end.
4. Now let’s go ahead and change the name of the last column from Total to Profits. Go to the Chart Cosmetics tab > Data Functionalities & Cosmetics > Customize.
   
   
   This will open a new dialog box. Click on the Waterfall/Cascade tab in it and set the name of the last column in the Summation label field. 
   
   
5. As you can see, this dialog box also allows us to set a single color for all positive columns in the chart and another one for all negative columns. When you click on the X next to Positive Columns Color, the color picker comes up. I like to give my green a slightly earthen shade, so I went to the color picker and put together the shade.
   
   
   Finally, after choosing a color for the negative columns as well, hit Apply and you will see the resultant chart in the Preview pane.
6. We are just one step away for checking out our first waterfall chart live in action. We just need to set the chart caption and axis titles. Head over to the Axis and Titles tab and put the Chart Title as Company Profit in Q1 2011. Remove the sub-title and axis titles completely as they are self-explanatory for this chart. Our chart is ready as you can see in the Preview pane.
   
   
7. Click on Finish to embed the chart in the slide. Position and size it the way you want.
   
   
   Finally hit slideshow and you have your lovely animated waterfall chart to play around with. 
   
   
8. Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could add columns that show your company’s total revenue and total costs as well apart from the final Profit? oomfo has you covered. Just head over to the Chart Data tab and add a row above Fixed Costs.
   
   
   Enter the label that you would like to see for the column. I have kept it simple with Total Revenue. Then hover over the value column till the button for more options (a button with ellipses) comes up. 
   
   
   When you click on it, the Chart Data Plot Properties dialog box comes up. Under  Waterfall/Cascade chart, you will see two options: Is this a sum column? and Use Cumulative Values. Checking Is this a sum column plots a column that is the cumulative sum of all the columns from the last sum column you plotted in the same way.
   
   
   For plotting Total Revenue, Is this a sum column? sums up all the columns since the start of the chart since there are no sum columns before it. For plotting Total Costs, we will add a row at the end of the data grid and check Is this a sum column? for it. And in that case, it will plot the sum of the columns from Total Revenue column we just added, which is basically the sum of Fixed Costs and Variable Costs.

   The Use Cumulative Values does the same work as the Total column at the end. It simply sums up everything right from the start of the chart till that point.

   The company profit waterfall chart is all done after you have set up the intermediate sum columns for total revenue and total costs. Here’s what it should look like:
   
   
   Notice that the final Profit column stays undisturbed just the way we wanted.

So isn’t it easy to create powerful waterfall charts in minutes using oomfo? If you like what you see, go ahead and download your copy of oomfo now. It’s free!

PowerPoint does not offer funnel charts by default. So every time you need to show elimination or streamlining of data, you either need to show the data itself in a table or use a wrong chart like the column chart. With oomfo, you can create a funnel chart in PowerPoint and set the functionality exactly as you need in minutes.

What is a funnel chart?

A funnel chart is used to show progressive reduction of data as it passes from one phase to another. The size of the area is determined by the series value as a percentage of the total of all values. The easiest example of this is if you want to show your sales conversion rates – starting from the number of leads you got, you move to the number of leads you could you qualify and finally the closure stage. Understandably, there would be a reduction of data, call it phased elimination if you want to, when you move from one stage to another.

The recruitment process is another example of progressive reduction of data.

Creating a funnel chart using oomfo

1. We will be using the oomfo chart builder to create our funnel chart. If you are on Windows 2003, go to Insert Menu > oomfo > Insert chart to launch the builder. If you are on Windows 2007 or 2010, go to the Insert tab and click on the Insert Chart button in the oomfo ribbon.
   
   
2. In the chart builder that comes up, select chart type as Single Series from the drop-down and then select the funnel chart from the list of the charts.
   
   
   As soon as you make the selection, you will see a funnel chart with dummy data shown in the Preview pane. 

   You can see that the chart builder lists nine steps on the left – however you do not need to complete each step to create a chart. In fact, you can stop at the first step itself after selecting the chart (notice the Finish button on the bottom-right) but more realistically, you will need to select the chart and enter its data at least.

3. Let’s go ahead and enter the data for the sales conversion funnel chart we are going to make. You can either click on the Next button on the bottom-right or click on the Chart Data button on the top-left.
   
   
   As soon as you finish entering the data, hit Apply and you will see the funnel chart with this data in the Preview pane. You will notice the funnel chart has data labels but not the values.
4. To display the data values, go to the Data Properties tab > Show Data Values > Show percentage instead of values. Since we are more concerned with looking at the reduction of leads from one phase to another, the percentage values will serve us better.
   
   
5. The only thing left to do is add the appropriate captions to the chart which is done in the Axis and Titles tab. You can click on the tab directly or click on Next from the Data Properties tab to get to it. Just enter the caption you want for the chart and as always, it will be reflected in the Preview Pane itself.
   
   
6. Now we are all set to see the chart in its full glory. Click Finish to embed the chart into the slide and then drag it to the position you want.
   
   
   You can also resize the chart by dragging its sides the way you want. After you are done with it, go to slideshow to see the funnel chart in action.
7. You will see an animated and interactive funnel chart in your slideshow. Isn’t it a breath of fresh air from the static and limited PowerPoint charts you have been seeing all your life? Go ahead and click on one of the wedges to slice it out.
   
   
   Looks cool, doesn’t it? More importantly, during a presentation, if you want to highlight a particular data set, you can just click on it and slice it out this way. To slice the wedge back in, just click on it again.
8. What if you wanted to have a wedge sliced out at the start itself? That too is possible with oomfo. We will go back and edit the chart to slice out a wedge by default. Go to normal mode (exit the slideshow mode), select the chart and click on Edit chart in the oomfo ribbon (or from the right-click menu).Now go to the Chart Data tab and hover over the data item you want to slice out. Click on the options button that comes up.
   
   
   On clicking on it, a dialog box Chart Data Plot Properties will come up. Check Slice out this data item under Pie, Doughnut, Funnel & Pyramid Charts.
   
   
   Now click on Ok and hit Apply under the data grid. In the slideshow, you will be able to see how the wedge is sliced out by default.
   
   
9. So far, so good. Now what if you wanted to display the value of each stage in the funnel as a percentage of the previous stage? For example, what percentage of deals from the Qualification stage get through to the Needs Analysis stage? The current figure of 67.42% is w.r.t to all the deals entering the top of the funnel and not w.r.t the previous stage only. oomfo has you covered on this as well.

Going back to the chart wizard to edit the chart, go to Chart Cosmetics tab > Data Functionalities & Cosmetics > Customize > Funnel/Pyramid > Values appear as percent of previous slice.
   
   
   As soon as you click Ok, you will see that you have exactly what you needed in the Preview pane.
   
   

Exactly what you needed, isn’t it?

That’s how easy it is to create a funnel chart using oomfo and set the desired functionality. It also brings other advanced charts like Waterfall, Pareto, Marimekko and Pyramid to PowerPoint. So in case you haven’t got your hands on it already, do it now.

oomfo, as you might already know, is our way of jazzing up data in PowerPoint. It was born early last year after months of bath-tub ‘Eureka’ moments. Coming from the FusionCharts stable, it is a part of our obsessive-compulsive quest to make data more sexy.

Since it was born, we’ve had 15,000 beta users testing, playing and actually using oomfo for their presentations. Everyone has been generous with their feedback on the product, right from the bugs they encountered to enhancement suggestions. Incorporating all the feedback, today oomfo does a lot more than just make your data sexy. It now makes your data sexy…AND….powerful!

Naturally we can’t wait to show it off! Take a look!

Why oomfo?

Because PowerPoint charts deserve better. They have been the same, limited and boring for too long. We surely cannot let that continue, now, can we?

So we decided to revolutionize the way data is visualized in presentations. Of course, you could always embed the charts from FusionCharts to your presentations using our comprehensive 10-step process. But we thought the world of PowerPoint needed something simpler. Something that was quick, intuitive and allowed you to focus on your data. So we brought in a simple wizard-based interface to help create stunning charts in a matter of seconds. It had all the animation and interactivity of FusionCharts that has been loved the world over. We were mighty impressed with the results.

And we decided to call it oomfo.

And in case you are wondering how we got to the name oomfo, here’s our thought process behind it – oomfo makes boring beautiful. It adds some real oomph to your presentations, and hence the name fits in perfectly.

Ok, let’s cut the BS. Here’s what the truth is – It is a 5-letter word which had a .com domain available and felt kind of good when rolled off the tongue.

What does oomfo do for you?

oomfo makes your charts look great with its animation and interactivity, gives you advanced capabilities like live data charting and offers charts that PowerPoint forgot to offer. Here’s everything you can do with it:

• Give your presentations a great first impression: With exciting animation, beautiful gradients, 2D/3D designs and smartly thought-out layouts, your charts will look stunning every single time. Your audience is sure to go wow.
• Communicate better with your audience: oomfo brings interactive capabilities like you have never seen before in PowerPoint. Want to show which data set you are talking about in a pie chart during your presentation? Just click on it and it will slice out beautifully. Want to hide a series of data in a combination chart so you can focus on the others? Just click on its icon in the legend and it will be hidden. Want to put a detailed analysis of a data set on the chart? Use the tooltips.
• Make sure you have the right chart for your data: While PowerPoint is well covered on the basic chart types, when it comes to advanced charts, it looks like they forgot most of them. oomfo has you covered on these advanced charts as well so you have the right tool for all kinds of data. Use the Pareto chart for everything 80-20, the visually editable column and line charts for planning and forecasting, the Waterfall chart for showing increase and decrease in a value, the Marimekko chart for marketing analysis, and the Zoom Line chart for showing tens of thousands of data points in a single slide.
• Plot live data on your chart: If you are a sales manager and need to present your team’s figures to your boss every month, why create new charts with updated figures every single time? oomfo can can pull live data from any URL. Just get salesforce (or the CRM system you use) to send you this data in XML and let your charts know where the data will be coming from. Set it up once, use it forever without having to go back to your boring spreadsheet. Use it for plotting marketing results, attendance numbers and even financial results.
• Customize the charts in much greater details than PowerPoint allows you to: With oomfo, you can customize almost everything you see on the chart. Background, border, captions, divisional lines, formatting of the numbers, alignment of the labels, position of the legend, almost everything. You can add trendlines to the chart, highlight a data set and even add special animation styles for different chart elements. And in case you don’t want to spend so much time on the customization, you can simply make your charts match the presentation theme with a couple of clicks. Simple and effective.
• Get highly portable charts: The charts you create with oomfo work pretty much anywhere. You can email it to your colleagues with the charts embedded as images. If any of them have oomfo installed, they can even convert these images back to the oomfo charts with just a click and enjoy all the animation & interactivity. You can also export entire slides as webpages that work across all browsers, unlike PowerPoint’s export which works only on IE. That’s how smart oomfo is.

If the possibilities of what you can do with these excite you, go get your hands on oomfo right now. That is, if you haven’t already.

Who’s behind oomfo?

oomfo is a FusionCharts project. It is backed by a small team of four developers led by Rahul, and the business minds behind FusionCharts.

oomfo is built in Microsoft VB6 and the charts are rendered using Adobe Flash coming from FusionCharts. Since we are embedding the Flash Player in PowerPoint, sometimes we get completely weird results. We then have to work weeks and weeks together just to get it back to the expected. But then, we have a hard-working team who are annoyingly stubborn about getting it right.

Plans ahead

Lots of them. oomfo has already won for itself a 15,000 strong beta community and people have been talking a lot about it. With all the feedback we collected and our own thoughts on how charting in PowerPoint should be, we have a lot of exciting additions to oomfo planned. In the coming months, we will be adding gauges, data-driven maps and drill-down functionality to oomfo.

oomfo is still in beta, and we are looking for all the feedback we can get. You share, we implement. As simple as it can get. And we all get a mind-blowing oomfo to add that much-needed awesomeness to PowerPoint. So if there is anything you think oomfo has to have, send it now to support@oomfo.com.