Create and automate reports in Protobi

Manually creating client reports can be time consuming, resource-intensive and inefficient. When your studies has quarterly, monthly or even weekly reporting requirements across multiple markets or segments it can become quite costly to your team. 

Protobi eliminates this bottleneck by integrating PowerPoint report generation directly into your analysis workflow. Now you can explore data, build insights, and generate client-ready presentations all in one platform.

This tutorial shows how your team can use Protobi to streamline your entire tracking program and update reports automatically.

How It Works: Two Simple Workflows

Import data

Start with your raw survey data and create a new project from scratch.

Getting Started

Click the "New project..." button from your Protobi dashboard. You'll see your recent projects listed on the left, along with example projects on the right that you can explore to understand Protobi's capabilities.

Design the online dashboard

Once your data is imported, the next step is to neatly organize and edit the charts in your dashboard to tell your data story effectively.

Make design tweaks so each appears in a form suitable for your analysis:

• Start by running Autogroup to organize your data into sections. 
• Compact checkboxes and ratings into tidy collections
• Extract common text into parent groups
• Translate text verbatims
• Bin numeric values into ranges
• Recode text verbatims
• Set filters to reflect skip patterns
• Change chart types
• Zero fill missing values
• Edit value formats

Learn more in our Basic setup tutorial.

Chart design

The charts in your online dashboard should reflect the look and feel of the report you want to deliver. 

You can use different chartTypes (bars, columns, pies, lines, etc.) and chartOptions to stylize the charts to match your brand guidelines or client preferences. Adjust colors, fonts, label positions, and data display formats to create polished, professional visualizations.

Export charts from Protobi to PowerPoint

Select your polished charts and export them to PowerPoint. You can also group the questions you want to include in your PowerPoint report onto the same tab to make exporting easier (i.e. the Chart gallery group seen in the image below).

Once grouped together, you can simply select the entire group and choose Export>as slides to PowerPoint.

Note: Protobi can also export into a old PowerPoint report. So, if you already have a historical report that you use for your study, you do not need to export the charts anew out of Protobi.

Export Process

1. Select your charts or an entire section from the left sidebar
2. Click "Export" in the top tool bar
3. From the drop down menu choose the export format.
4. Protobi exports to PowerPoint as editable charts and to Excel as tables or raw respondent leve data.

Verify your exported charts

The exported charts maintain all your design choices from Protobi. In PowerPoint's Selection Pane (Arrange > Selection), each chart is automatically named with its Protobi element key (e.g., "cS1_donut"). This enables automatic updates when you add new wave data.

Note: If you're using a historical report, , you can manually connect charts by editing shape names in the (Arrange>Selection) Selection Pane to match your Protobi keys.

Build PowerPoint client report

Once charts are exported from Protobi, you have full flexibility to build and customize your PowerPoint report. You can copy, paste, reposition, resize, and even change the color scheme of your charts to match your brand guidelines or client preferences.

As long as you don't change the chart's shape name in the Selection Pane, Protobi can reconnect to that chart and update it automatically when new wave data arrives. This means you can customize the appearance once, and all future updates will preserve your design choices.

When you upload the edited PowerPoint back to Protobi as a template, subsequent exports will populate your custom-colored template with updated data while preserving all your formatting, colors, and layout choices.

Upload the edited PowerPoint report as a template

Once you have the final version of your report, upload it as a template in the data section of project settings.This allows Protobi to use your customized PowerPoint file as the base for all future exports.

Where to Upload

Navigate to the Data section in your Project Settings (left sidebar). Here you'll see a document section where you can upload your template file. Simply drag and drop your customized .pptx file or click to select it from your computer.

Template Properties

After uploading, you can configure template properties including page setup dimensions, chart positioning, fonts, and slide layouts. The template settings ensure that all exported charts will match your established formatting standards.

Update PowerPoint Options for groups and elements

Once you have uploaded the template, got back to your Protobi dashboard to update the PowerPoint options on the export group.

Key Settings to Configure In the chartOptions editor (accessed by clicking the gear icon on any element), expand the powerpoint section to set:

• defaultSlideLayout: The default PPTX slide layout for charts that are not named in the PPTX template.
• exportAs: Export chart as 'native' chart, as editable 'shapes' or a static 'image'.
• templateKey: The name of the template table in the data section of project settings.

Note: If you want to export only one chart at a time, then you will also want to set these attributes for each individual chart as well. But if you will always export the entire group, then you only need to set the powerpointOptions at the group level.

Update chart data in-place

Set update data only

Set the group and/or each chart included in your report to export as data only in the chartType dialog. This way each time you export the charts, only the underlying data of the PowerPoint chart is replaced and any manual changes you made in the PowerPoint template won't be overwritten.

Note: Similar to the other powerpointOptions, updateDataOnly can also be set at the group level. But if you want the flexibility to export and update only select charts, then set updateDataOnly for each individual chart.

How to Enable Data-Only Updates

In the chartType dialog for your chart or chart group, locate the PowerPoint options section you'll see four export format options:

image: Export to powerpoint as image charts: Export to powerpoint as chart object shapes: Export to powerpoint as drawing shapes shapes+table: Export to powerpoint as shapes and keep tables as powerpoint tables update data only (green button): Update data only when linked to existing presentation

Click the "update only" option to enable this mode. When activated, subsequent exports will refresh the chart data without overwriting your custom colors, fonts, or layout modifications in the PowerPoint template.

View chart to template connections

Protobi offers a specialized PowerPoint Connector that shows how your visualizes the PowerPoint to Protobi chart connections. This visual reference helps you verify that all connections are properly configured.

First, select the group with your report questions and choose clone (simple) from the advanced menu.  This creates a duplicate group that you'll convert into a connector visualization.

Configure the Connector

The PowerPoint connector is not a first-class chartType yet, but in the JSON editor for the clone you create you can manually set the chartType to “PPTXConnector”. After you manually edit chartType, press “Ok” on the JSON dialog. 

Verify Template Connection

If the connector tab appears blank after saving, return to the JSON editor and find the “resources" attribute. Be sure that the PPTX name (highlighted below) exactly matches the table name (not file name) of the report you uploaded to the data section of project settings. 

Result

Once properly configured, the PowerPoint Connector displays a visual layout of your template slide showing how each Protobi chart key (cS1, cQ7_coded, cQ4v1, dQ4v1) connects to its corresponding PowerPoint shape. This makes it easy to verify all mappings at a glance.

Update charts using an Excel Workbook

Sometimes our clients already have a process to update their PowerPoint report with Excel. Or, the data that goes into a chart requires complex Excel calculations that they do not want to recreate in Protobi. 

Protobi lets you upload your Excel workbook, visualize the Excel to PPTX chart connections, and export from Protobi to update the report. Each time you want to update the report, simply update your Excel workbook and re-upload it to Protobi and re-export to get an updated report.

First upload your Excel workbook as a grey document table in the data section of project settings.

In your open project, select the group with your report questions and choose clone (simple) from the advanced menu. 

Change the chartType in your newly cloned group. The Excel to PowerPoint connector is not a first-class chartType yet, but in the JSON editor for the clone you create you can manually set the chartType to “XLSXtoPPTX”. After you manually edit chartType, press “Ok” on the JSON dialog. 

Your group will then look like the below image. Press “Add connection”.

If you press “Add connection” and nothing happens, got back to the JSON editor and find the “resources" attribute. 

Check that the xlsx name exactly matches the table name (not file name) of the Excel workbook you uploaded to the data section of project settings. Also be sure the “url” has the same pattern as the below example (keep in mind your dataset ID which is the long string of numbers and letter will be different). 

Also make sure the “excel” attribute exists and there is a resource again with the name of the table with your Excel workbook. 


Your connector should look like the image below, and when you press “Add connection”, a new row is added to the connector. 


Note: the Excel Range and Chart data columns can take a named Excel range (e.g. sample_overview) as well as explicit ranges (e.g. Sheet1!A1:B3). 

Each chart that you want to update needs to have a connection. 

Add data for next waves

Now that you have a new group that is capable of export data only into existing charts and tables, you can filter or update data with new waves to export a different set of data output to generate a new PowerPoint deck.

Refresh online dashboard

Select the specific group and - Export Powerpoint to update data only

This is no different than the PowerPoint export function that you have used, except with the updated pptxOptions, you now can have PowerPoint deck that has data updated based on your filter or new wave of data.

Export report charts and tables

Data / PowerPoint template

In the data section of a Protobi project, you can store multiple files, including PowerPoint files that can be used as custom templates.

PowerPoint Select Pane shape names

PowerPoint identifies its charts by slide numbers and name.  You can see these name by opening the “Selection Pane”.  Often names are generic and duplicated across different slides, such as “Subtitle 1”, "Title 9", etc.  However, you can name specific charts or groups with a name that can be identified by Protobi.

Protobi automatically names charts when exporting new charts to PowerPoint

When exporting data to PowerPoint as a new chart, the chart is automatically named after the element "key".  This name will be preserved if you copy the chart from one slide to another or from one PowerPoint deck to another.

Protobi looks for identically named charts when exporting before creating new charts for PowerPoint

Before creating a new chart, Protobi will look for existing charts in the PowerPoint template with an identical name as the key of the element being exported. If such a chart exists, Protobi will export the element to it in place instead of creating a new chart.