creating powerpoint presentations from within brio intelligence™ exploiting the automation...

Creating PowerPoint Presentations from within

Brio Intelligence™

Exploiting the Automation Interface

David Eastwood

Maddox Ford Ltd.

www.maddoxford.co.uk

http://www.maddoxford.co.uk/

2

Overview

• Work arose out of a need to create and update complex PowerPoint® presentations from Brio Intelligence™

• This presentation makes use of Brio Intelligence’s JavaScript capabilities and the Automation interface

• Key samples of code are shown and described

• Although centred on controlling PowerPoint presentations, the ideas are applicable to other Office products

3

Software Versions

• The code featured has been developed under Brio 6.2.3 (and earlier)

• It works with both Designer and Insight

• The software has been tested on Office 97, Office 2000

4

Origins of the work

• Prompted by the needs of a Category Management application

• End users worked with complex PowerPoint presentations which used Brio queries as the source of data

• There was a need to:– update existing slides for different time periods and/or

customers

– provide a simple control panel to create and format the slides as well as compose the data queries

– some graph types needed were not available in Brio – Radar, Bubble

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What do the applications look like?

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The PowerPoint object model

* The full object model is available from MSDN – see refs. at the end

† Object names used by us within Brio

Application

Presentation(s)

Slide(s)

Shape(s)

OLEFormat

oPPT †

oPPTPres †

oPPTSlide †

ObjectoPPTChart or oPPTTable †

*

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Getting started

• Create the link to PowerPointoPPT = new JOOLEObject("PowerPoint.Application");

• Create a new presentationoPPT.Visible = true;

oPPTPres = oPPT.Presentations.Add();

Alert("New presentation created: \r\n"+ oPPTPres.Name)

• Open an existing presentationsFile = tbFileLocation.Text; // name from text box

oPPTPres = oPPT.Presentations.Open(sFile);

Alert("Presentation Loaded: \r\n"+ oPPTPres.Name)

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Slide manipulation (1)

• Add a slide to the end of the slide shownSlideNums = oPPTPres.Slides.Count;

oPPTSlide = oPPTPres.Slides.Add(ppLayoutTitleOnly,(nSlideNums+1)) //***

// const ppLayoutTitleOnly == 11

• Add a title (if the slide has one defined)oPPTSlide.Shapes.Title.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Sample

title";

*** Note this syntax – reverse order to Office documentation

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Slide manipulation (2)

• Add a footeroPPTFooter = oPPTSlide.Shapes.AddTextbox(20,700,500,10,1); //***

oPPTFooter.TextFrame.TextRange = "Slide created on " + (new Date()).toUTCString();

• Format some textoPPTFooter.TextFrame.TextRange.Font.Size = 8;

oPPTFooter.TextFrame.TextRange.Font.Italic = true;


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Objects in slides

• Charts and tables are embedded objects on a slide

• They form part of the Shapes collection

• The OLEFormat object contains the methods and properties of embedded OLE objects

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Graph creation (1)

• We chose to use Microsoft Graph – you could use embedded Excel graphs instead

• Equivalent to the Insert/Chart menu in PowerPoint

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Graph creation (2)

• Graph has an attached datasheet whose layout determines the look of the graph

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Create the graph object

oNew = oPPTSlide.Shapes.AddOLEObject(false,"",0,"",false,"", "MSGraph.Chart",350,600,150,50); // ****

//AddOLEObject arguments are:

//link,iconlabel,inconindex,iconfilename,displayasicon,filename,classname,

//height,width,top,left

oPPTChart =oNew.OLEFormat.Object;

// now set the chart type

oPPTChart.ChartType = xlColumnClustered ; // const xlColumnClustered == 54

oPPTChart.Application.PlotBy = xlColumns; // const xlColumns == 2


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Moving data

• Data can be exported via the clipboard

• Exports from table sections can use the GetCell() method but it’s slower

• We copied the data via the clipboard (and re-arranged it within the DataSheet if necessary):

oPPTChart.Application.DataSheet.Columns.Clear;

ActiveDocument.Sections["Pivot"].Copy();

oPPTChart.Application.DataSheet.Range("00:00").Paste;

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Formatting

• All PowerPoint format properties are available to be read and altered

• As are the properties of embedded objects such as graphs:

function AddDataLabels(chart){

chart.Application.Chart.ApplyDataLabels;

for (var i=1; i<=chart.SeriesCollection.Count; i++){

chart.SeriesCollection.Item(i).HasDataLabels = true;

chart.SeriesCollection.Item(i).DataLabels.Font.Size = 10;

}

}

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Table creation

• We chose to create embedded spreadsheets.

• You can also use embedded Word Tables and (in PowerPoint 2000) native PowerPoint tables (members of the Shapes collection)

oNew = oPPTSlide.Shapes.AddOLEObject(false,"",0,"",false, "","Excel.Sheet",350,600,150,50); //***

//AddOLEObject arguments are:

// link,iconlabel,iconindex,iconfilename,displayasicon,

// filename,classname,height,width,top,left

oPPTTable = oNew.OLEFormat.Object;


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Table data

• Copy the data to the table

ActiveDocument.Sections["Pivot"].Copy();

oPPTTable.Sheets.Item(1).Paste;

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Updating slides

• We need to identify the source of the data already on the slide:

– did Brio create this slide?

– which Query created this slide?

– which Section was the source of the data?

– what Limits were used when the query ran?

• We can then reset the Brio query to match the slide and allow the user to vary these settings (e.g. time period)

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Identifying slides and their source

• Slides have a SlideID property – a unique ID independent of slide order (and not visible to the PowerPoint user)

• Slides have Tags – this lets you create your own properties for a slide

Slide.Tags.Add("Value", "TAG LABEL"); //***

// the name of the Tag Label should be in caps

// PowerPoint will return caps anyway!


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Using Tags

• We use tags to

– Label the slide as being created by Brio

– Show the code version used to create the slide

– Name the query which created the slide

– Name limits and limit values

– etc.

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Finding objects in a slide

• When updating a slide, you will need to find the object from the Shapes collection

function FindOLE(oPPTSlide){

var nShapeCount = oPPTSlide.Shapes.Count

for (var n=1; n<=nShapeCount; n++){

var nShapeType= oPPTSlide.Shapes.Item(n).Type;

if (nShapeType == msoEmbeddedOLEObject){

// Const msoEmbeddedOLEObject == 7

break;

}

}

return oPPTSlide.Shapes.Item(n).OLEFormat.Object;

}

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Live demo

• I will illustrate the code we have been discussing via the demo application

• This demo code available from Maddox Ford web site

www.maddoxford.co.uk

[email protected]

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Coding considerations

• (Brio 6.2.3) When calling PowerPoint methods with multiple arguments you need to supply the arguments in the reverse order to that shown in Microsoft documentation

Brio: Slide.Tags.Add("Value", "TAG LABEL");

Microsoft: Slide.Tags.Add("TAG LABEL", "Value")

• When selecting Items in a collection, use the .Item(n) method not [n]

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Development aids (1)

• Use VB Script editor in PowerPoint to confirm syntax of commands

• You may need to load additional Help files in PowerPoint

• MSDN also has reference information and articles

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‘On-Line Help’

• Find the object or method

• Press F1

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• External JavaScript editor can be helpful with large scripts

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• Create a set of constants to match those used by Office

• Try to follow good JavaScript coding conventions

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Reference Material and Acknowledgements

• MSDNhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/library

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/modcore/html/deovrObjectModelGuide.asp

• On-line Help in Office (VB Editors)

• Platypus JavaScript editorhttp://www.c-point.com/pjedit.htm

• ‘JavaScript – The Definitive Guide’David Flanagan, O’Reilly

• Maddox Ford Brio Development [email protected]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/modcore/html/deovrObjectModelGuide.asp

http://www.c-point.com/pjedit.htm

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