Organize your slides and presentations like the pros. SlideSource.com was developed over many years working with teams in some of the largest companies in the world who need to manage a large amount of presentation content. Now these same tools are available to every presenter.
Imagine an unwanted change was made to a PowerPoint file you are responsible for. How do you get back the version of the slide that existed before the change was made?
If the person saved right over the previous version, you’re completely out of luck and the version of the slide you want to restore is gone forever.
If they saved the presentation as a new file, you may be in better shape, but you still need to wade through and open each version of the presentation to find the one with the version of the slide you want to get back.
This scenario plays out every day in companies everywhere resulting in lost information and lost productivity.
Keeping your slides in SlideSource means you will never lose any work ever again.
SlideSource automatically retains every version of every slide in your library. One click and you will see a listing of every version of a slide since it was first uploaded into the system. The list includes a thumbnail image of each version along with the date the changes were made as well as the name of who made them.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is possible to go back again — at least if you’re a SlideSource user. Sign up now for a free, full-featured subscription. Find out why SlideSource is the most advanced presentation management system available!
In part one of this series, we introduced readers to new features and improvements to SlideSource that help users find and organize their slides so that presentation creation and maintenance takes less time and requires fewer resources. In this post we will look at another set of recently deployed features and improvements that will help users stay informed about what’s happening with the slides and presentations in their libraries. These oversight tools can be very important when working in hectic collaborative environments. A screen capture gallery at the end of this article will provide additional details and give you a chance to see these innovative slide management capabilities in action.
Library Activity Reporting
This feature lets you and your team see the big picture whenever you need to. Clicking a link on the Library Management page creates an up-to-the-minute report that details:
The most recently edited slides and presentations along with the editor and the date the edits were made
The users who have accessed the library
How often each presentation has been downloaded
How many slides have been downloaded by each user
There is also an overview report providing a breakdown by week of the:
Number of slides uploaded
Number of slides edited
Number of users who have logged in
Number of users who have downloaded slides
This information is provided in a standard Excel workbook, so it can be easily shared and integrated into other documents and reports.
Slide Collection Change Alerts
The action subscription feature sends alerts detailing changes made to any slide in a slide collection. Users can subscribe to a daily summary of all changes. Users can also subscribe to immediate alerts that will be sent when changes they specified are made. These include:
Slides are edited
Slides are added to the library
Slide versions are approved or rejected
Slide properties are edited
Slides are pending approval
Items in folders are reorganized
Items are deleted
Deleted items are restored
Actions are undone or redone
Comments are posted
The user can subscribe to alerts for just one, or any number of these immediate alerts.
Slide and Presentation Change Alerts
Slide and presentations action subscriptions offer the same sort of alerts except they are focused on individual slides and presentations rather than on entire slide collections. This feature is useful when there is a slide or presentation that requires a more intense level of monitoring. And as with the slide collection alerts, users can receive a daily digest of all changes as well as instant alerts for the types of changes that they specify.
If you aren’t already a SlideSource user, now is a great time to sign up for a free account and give it a test drive. The free subscription has all of the features and capabilities of the paid subscription levels so you will be able to see exactly what makes SlideSource the most innovative and useful presentation management system available.
Click on image to enlarge.
Library Activity Reporting: This is the first tab of the Excel workbook created when a library activity report is requested. Each of the tabs in the workbook show addition, more detailed information.
Slide Collection Change Alerts: By simply checking boxes on the this page, the user can be set up the creation of alerts. These alerts can be sent either once a day or immediately when any slide in a collection changes.
Slide and Presentation Change Alerts: Alerts can also be sent either once a day or immediately when a specific slide or presentation changes.
Change Alerts: An example of the email sent by SlideSource when an slide has been changed. In this case, approval is not required before the updated slide can be seen and used by others.
Change Alerts: An example of the email sent by SlideSource when an slide has been changed. In this case, the slide owner must approve the change before the updated slide can be seen and used by others.
In January, SlideSource celebrated its third birthday and added two thousand new users to our rapidly expanding community. Our continued growth as the industry’s best slide management system is largely due to the fact that we listen carefully to our users and continually innovate based on what they tell us.
As part of this innovation process, we are currently deploying several new features, functions, and improvements that make it even easier to take control of your slides and presentations. In part one of this two-part series, we will be looking at features that help you find and organize your slides (be sure to check out the screen capture gallery at the end of this article for additional details).
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Using SlideSource to manage your presentation content means that all of your slides and presentations are finally located in one place. You no longer have to guess which PowerPoint file, in which folder on what USB drive, computer, or cloud server has the slide you are looking for. Equally important, each slide now has useful metadata attached to it. This metadata includes information like who edited a slide most recently and when those changes were made, as well as things like user generated comments and tags. Combining this with the built-in search function makes finding, managing, and actually using all of your organization’s slides much more efficient.
Enhanced Search Options
From the beginning, the SlideSource search function has been powerful — letting users search specifically in the slide title, text, or notes content as well as in the editor and tags metadata fields. With the enhancements recently released, users can now search all metadata fields including any custom fields created by the user.
Unlimited Custom Metadata Fields
Users can now add as many custom fields as they want to the metadata attached to each of their slides. Available metadata field types include one line text, multi-line rich text, date/time, and drop down list.
This is a very powerful feature that can be used in many ways. For example, you may want to have a field tracking the source of the information on the slide, or the type of content on the slide, or the date when the information presented becomes invalid, or even the slide’s intended audience. A slide in a PowerPoint file is just a slide, but a slide with your custom metadata attached becomes a valuable asset to your organization.
Improved Search Tag Management
The SlideSource search tag is a special kind of metadata specially designed to be added to slides very quickly. Our recent update makes it even easier to find all the slides and presentations in a library that have been assigned a particular search tag and the tag management interface has been improved to make it easy to rename tags across all of the slides in the library.
For instance, you want to be able to easily track down a number of slides that you feel are important and give them the search tag “IMPORTANT.” However, a co-worker feels the slides are actually crucial and insists that the tag be changed. Renaming the “IMPORTANT”tag to “CRUCIAL” on the tag management page will then update all of the slides with the new tag without having to go to each slide and making the change manually.
Custom Stamps
One of Slide Source’s most unique and features has been the ability to “stamp” slides with a watermark indicating the slide’s owner within the organization as well as its current status in the approval process. Our recent update has expanded this capability so that users can now create custom stamps that appear either on their slides or off to the side of the slide. These stamps are added to the slides when they are downloaded. Users can pick the font, font size, color and location of the stamp. The stamps can be used to display things like approved use information, quality control review status, unique ID numbers or even global confidentiality messages without having to open and edit every single slide.
In the next post, we will review new features that will help you to keep track of what’s going on with your slides and presentations which is very important when you are working in a hectic, collaborative environment.
If you aren’t already a SlideSource.com user, now is a great time to sign up for a free account and give it a try. The free subscription has all of the features and capabilities of the paid subscription levels so you will be able to see exactly what makes SlideSource.com the most innovative and useful presentation management system available.
Click on image to enlarge.
Enhanced search options: This is the search dialog box showing the many fields available. Note the inclusion of the custom, user-specified metadata fields.
Unlimited Custom Fields: Use this page to create your own custom metadata fields that will help you to find, organize, and manage your slides. Note the option to have fields appear in folder view slide listings.
Slide Properties: Each slide in SlideSource has a slide details page. This is the part of the page showing all of a slide's properties including the default and custom metadata. This is where metadata and tags are viewed, added, and edited.
Search Tags: This a the search tag section of the slide details page. New search tags are added here and if a tag already exists it will be available in an auto-complete list ("Triangles" in this case).
Search Tags Management Page: Click on a tag here and see all slides with that tag. If you rename a tag here, it will be changed on all slides it's attached to. Tags are also removed here.
Custom Stamps: This is the custom stamp create/edit page. Stamp can be static, user-specified text or can be dynamically generated from metadata fields. Note the many formatting options. Slides can have more than one stamp.
Custom Stamps: This is a slide with a custom stamp it the upper left corner. This stamp was dynamically generated using the "Audience" custom data field.
If you regularly use USB sticks to backup or transport presentation files, I’m guessing you have asked yourself this question at least once in your career (perhaps with an increasing sense of panic as you run out of places you haven’t searched). How many times have you found the stick in clothes already in the hamper? How many times have you never been able to find it at all?
A recent study found that over 22,000 USB sticks get left at the dry cleaners on an annual basis. And that’s just in the U.K. This number is even more sobering when you consider that the study also revealed almost half of these sticks never get returned to their owner.
This can be a major problem for several reasons. For instance, a PowerPoint file on that missing stick may be the only copy of the high-profile presentation you are scheduled to deliver tomorrow morning. It might contain highly sensitive or proprietary content. Given the risks, your best bet is to avoid relying on portable data storage altogether.
SlideSource.com keeps all your slides in a secure, centrally located, cloud-based content library that is easily accessible by all the members of your team, all the time. This means that your crucial files will never end up in a bin beneath your dry cleaner’s counter and you will always know exactly where the latest and greatest version of every slide and presentation can be found. SlideSource also supports tagging of individual slides and has a robust search function so slides are easy to find — even within the system.
Most if not all of the stress a person experiences in the workplace can be traced back to their lack of control over the circumstances they work in but…
Ownership gives you control
SlideSource’s newest feature, Content Ownership, gives you total control over the all the slides you’re responsible for.
If someone changes a slide in a slide library that you own, you will be notified and the changes they made will not become official until you approve them. Slides uploaded to a slide library you own will be marked “Pending†until you approve them. Detailed information about this exciting, stress-reducing new feature, and screen shots showing it in action, can be found here.
If you are already a subscriber, be sure to give Content Ownership a try soon. And in either case, please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.
If the person saved right over the previous version, you’re completely out of luck and the version of the slide you want to restore is gone forever.
In January, SlideSource celebrated its third birthday and added two thousand new users to our rapidly expanding community. Our continued growth as the industry’s best slide management system is largely due to the fact that we listen carefully to our users and continually innovate based on what they tell us.
If someone changes a slide in a slide library that you own, you will be notified and the changes they made will not become official until you approve them. Slides uploaded to a slide library you own will be marked “Pending†until you approve them. Detailed information about this exciting, stress-reducing new feature, and screen shots showing it in action, can be 
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