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Can you embed a Looker iframe in PowerPoint / Google Slides?

Department of Customer Love
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Userlevel 5

Last tested: Sep 8, 2020
 

Looking for a solution to export a dashboard of visualizations to a Google Slide deck on their template. Below were the options I was able to outline. Spoiler alert: none are ideal.

  • (1) Python Script
    • Overview
      • Allows you to take a template slide deck and push viz images onto them
    • Pros
      • Most complete, detailed solution
      • Works with Google Slides
      • Very automatic solution once complete - would scale well
    • Cons
      • Requires significant dev time to create the solution
      • Minor maintenance may be required to make changes over time
  • (2) LiveSlides
    • Overview
      • Embed live visualizations into MS PPT presentation
    • Pros
      • Embed interactive visualizations into a PPT presentation
      • Very easy to get set up
      • Will update with live data with no work. No need to export images
    • Cons
      • Only available in MS PowerPoint
      • Cannot be exported to PDF
  • (3) Use a webhook tool like Zapier
    • Overview
      • Use a tool like Zapier to send a visualization from Looker and place it on slides
    • Pros
      • Uses Google Slides
      • Could potentially allow you to update slides directly from Looker
    • Cons
      • Unproven method - haven't seen it implemented before
      • May need to create specific endpoints in Zapier for every image, which would be time consuming.

 

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3 replies

LucianaPadua
Userlevel 1

hi, any updates on this topic? 

thanks! 

J

Hello,

Very interested in the Python solution mentioned. What APIs would be used/needed for this initial setup?

KarlR

One potential workaround is to send the data from your visualization to Google Sheets, using the new Looker Actions - Google Sheets integration. Maybe not ideal because you will need to use Google Sheets charts as your visualization, but live charts from Google Sheets can be directly embedded into Google Slides. Here’s what you’d need to do:

  1. Have your admin enable the action
  2. Create and prep a destination Google Sheet
  3. Schedule the delivery of the data from your visualization
  4. Create (recreate) your charts in Google Sheets
  5. Copy and paste the the chart into Google Slide (choose Link to spreadsheet when prompted)

Like with some of the other options some initial work is needed, but once set up it can be fully automated.

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