GoodData allows you to analyze data on the fly and create reports and dashboards out of them. More often then not, these reports end up being projected onto a wall as part of a meeting. I’ve seen some people switch back and forth between the presentation screen and the browser. It is however quite easy to use GoodData dashboards directly inside your PowerPoint presentation.

You’ll need to download a plugin for PowerPoint called LiveWeb (choose the version corresponding to your PowerPoint). Upon downloading and decompressing, double-click the LiveWeb.ppam to install the plugin.

Let’s switch for a while to a GoodData dashboard. In the upper-left corner next to the dashboard name is a Share link. Click it and find the text snippet with the HTML code. You will need to copy the address of this dashboard which is enclosed in quotes following “src” attribute. View this screenshot to see what I mean:

[caption id=“attachment_4028” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Copy the text highlighted between the quotes as the address to your dashboard”][/caption]

Back in your PowerPoint presentation, find the Insert tab. Thanks to your new PowerPoint plugin, it should now feature a Web Page button for embedding web into your presentations:

Click it, and paste the dashboard address into the first field. Don’t forget to click the Add button, then click Next to proceed, leave the settings unchanged and click Finish.

Your presentation should now contain a big black box as a placeholder for the web page. The real dashboard is going to display only once you start running the presentation fullscreen. It is a good idea to run it once before you present - the first time the dashboard displays it will ask for your GoodData login. You can then exit/enter the presentation and dashboard again without needing to enter your password - until you exit PowerPoint completely.