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Creating Presentation Template Slides in Microsoft PowerPoint

The first step for creating presentation templates is to create slides in Microsoft PowerPoint. Figure 2 shows these slides consist of one background slide and multiple component slides.

Figure 2. Microsoft PowerPoint Slides That Can Make Up a Presentation Template

The component slides in Figure 2 are examples. You can use other component slides, such as an agenda, and you can exclude some of these component slides, such corporate overview. However, a template must have a background slide and one or more component slides. For information about the versions of Microsoft PowerPoint that are supported, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.

NOTE:  Presentations can use fields from only one business object. If you want to include additional fields, you must use Siebel Tools to add the business components that include these fields to the business object that is the basis of the presentation.

This task is a step in Process of Creating Presentation Templates.

Planning Presentation Templates

Before you create the slides in Microsoft PowerPoint, you must determine the format of the presentation and the information to include in the presentation.

Begin by reviewing previous successful presentations to see the sections they contain. For example, do they all contain an agenda, an executive overview, and a product summary? Also, review the current slides you have on hand, and note the customer questions these slides answer. Then determine how to organize the information. What topics are standard across all presentations? What topics are specific to certain presentations? What is the best order for the parts of the presentation? Finally, determine the fields to insert to customize the presentation (for example, contact name, account name, and industry). You use this information to create bookmarks in the Microsoft PowerPoint slides.

Creating a Background Slide

After you plan a template, you can create the presentation background slide for the template. This Microsoft PowerPoint slide serves as the title slide and also defines the layout and formatting of the entire presentation. This background slide can contain a company logo, special colors, background designs, headers, and footers.

To create a background slide

1. Create a new slide in Microsoft PowerPoint.
2. Because this slide also serves as the title slide, select the title slide layout template, and enter the title of the presentation.
3. Set up headers, footers, fonts, background colors, and other layout options for the template.

   For more information about completing these tasks, see the online help for Microsoft PowerPoint.

4. Save and close the file.

   Choose a name that uses only alphanumeric characters, and use the PPT file extension for Microsoft PowerPoint.

Creating Component Slides for Presentation Templates

After you create the background slide for the template, you can create the component slides. A component slide is a Microsoft PowerPoint slide that includes standard text, pictures, bulleted information, and personalized data.

To create a component slide, you enter the standard text in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation and then create bookmarks, or Microsoft PowerPoint placeholders for custom data. When a sales representative generates a presentation, these bookmarks are replaced with data from the Siebel application.

To create a component slide with bookmarks in Microsoft PowerPoint

1. Create a new slide in Microsoft PowerPoint.
2. Enter the standard text, pictures, bulleted information, and so on for the component slide.
3. Add bookmarks to the locations in the component slide to which you want to insert Siebel field data by completing the following steps:
   1. Place the cursor where you want to create a bookmark.
   2. Enter the following text:

   [["name of bookmark"]]

   For example, to create a bookmark for the company name, enter the following text:

   [[Company]]

4. Note the names of the bookmarks because you need these names when you map the bookmarks to Siebel field names.

   For more information, see Defining Presentation Field Mappings.

5. Save the component slide as a PPT file.