Fetching HubSpot data via API to a PowerPoint slide element

[SLapinsuo]

This question might have more to do with PowerPoint's capabilities, but is it possible to fetch Deals data via API to be included within a PowerPoint slide element such as a rectangle?

Our Sales uses a specific way to represent the sales funnel, but it's quite a bit of manual work to update the slides. Would be great to embed a script within a PPT shape, for example, fetching deal value.

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

All the API documentation is here for reference: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/overview

You could fetch the data from the API, but maybe it would be easier to just automate a report of Deals and have that scheduled to send to you on the cadence of the meetings then you have it ready for you. To the point of Powerpoint utilizing the API, that is more of a question for powerpoint, but I don't recall having the ability to pull in external data soures in that. So you would likely have to pull it into Excel and then drop the Excel table into Powerpoint making this more complex then it needs to be.

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

@SLapinsuo have you tried to create the report in HubSpot (to match as close as possible and tell the data story your sales team is trying to tell) and export it as an image? If you can't use the API as you're envisioning, the image might be a workaround. 

[slideformco]

If you're open to a third-party solution, we can help at Slideform. Our software is able to take specific records from the Deal object (along with other objects), and place them into specific elements of your presentation. A few things to note:

1. Our software is very focused on presentations, so do our best to preserve your original presentation formatting
2. You can mix & match data sources within a single presentation (e.g., Google Sheets)

3. Final output can be a PowerPoint, Google Slide, or PDF

Let me know if you think that works for you, and happy to chat further!

[SLapinsuo]

Hi @slideformco , yes, will want to test this, thanks!. I've been trying DataPoint, but ran into issues with pagination with API calls.

[slideformco]

Just given a cursory examination of DataPoint (thanks for the screenshots btw!), I would say our solution is more of point-and-click (i.e., it doesn't actually involve scripting). We're happy to give a quick demo anytime.

I'm not sure what the policy is for emails but the easiest way to get in contact with us to fill out the contact page from our homepage. 

[james-portant]

Hi @SLapinsuo ,

Nice to meet you.

I have a solution using Portant, our Certified HubSpot App. You can create the presentation templates with Google Slides and then export them to Powerpoint. 

We have built Portant to be simple and tightly integrated with HubSpot. It takes information from Deals and associated objects, like contacts and generates custom documents, like presentations. You can check it out here:
https://ecosystem.hubspot.com/marketplace/apps/sales/sales-enablement/portant-1323181

Also, I am happy to hop on a call to help you get set up 🙂Just reply to this message or send me an email here james@portant.co

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,

James

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

@SLapinsuo have you tried to create the report in HubSpot (to match as close as possible and tell the data story your sales team is trying to tell) and export it as an image? If you can't use the API as you're envisioning, the image might be a workaround. 

[SLapinsuo]

Thanks @danmoyle! I attempted this again just now but couldn't make it work - could of course be my inability with the product. The problem I had was that there was no funnel view available as a chart type when creating a custom report based on Deals as the primary source.

What I'm basically trying to achieve is a Kanban board similar to the built-in Deals view in HubSpot Sales. 

My notes on the customization of the default Kanban board:
-Some customization available for Kanban cards like default vs compact view, Display tags, Display priority and associated records, Show deal activity information, but
a) Unable to remove close date (perhaps not a big deal though)
b) All deals still cannot fit onto the screen for a screenshot. In PowerPoint, you can make small boxes side by side per one Kanban column, which fits a lot more data in a compact way.

I'll continue to try the other third-party solutions tested here. In my earlier post today I mentioned DataPoint. It felt like quality software, but I could not fetch more than 100 rows at once so unable to use the software to paginate.

[danmoyle]

@SLapinsuo not to sound too simple, but if it's a funnel you'd like, with conversion rates, have you built a funnel report specifically? 

[SLapinsuo]

By the way, below is what DataPoint looks like, one screenshot showing the configuration of one "connection". One can configure multiple connections, but I don't know how to use the API calls to tell "fetch me next 100 rows", if even possible without a script.

I found the below script from here (https://community.hubspot.com/t5/APIs-Integrations/Get-All-Deals-using-API-v3-and-Pagination/m-p/821... but I'm pretty sure I cannot use it with DataPoint/PowerPoint. 

url = 'https://api.hubapi.com/crm/v3/objects/deals'
headers = {'authorization':('Bearer '+ private_app_key)}
params = {'archived': 'false', 'limit': 100} # Adjust the parameters as needed

results = []
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params=params)
data = response.json()

while True:
results.extend(data['results'])
try:
url = data['paging']['next']['link']
except Exception as e:
print('The Error is: ', e)
break
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

#print(response.status_code,response.reason)
data = response.json()

[SLapinsuo]

More on DataPoint. So one can create multiple queries within a data connection and there's a query config window that looks like this:

I can see that HubSpot returns 4 tables (results, properties, paging, next). By selecting "properties" I get 100 rows of Deals shown in the preview. I think this might work by getting the "after" value from the "next" table and making a new data connection with the shown URL below....will test...

[SLapinsuo · Accepted solution]

Looks like it works! In the last call, the tables returned do not include the "paging" or "next" tables indicating that all Deals data has been fetched.

One downside of this software though is that it doesn't support PowerPoint for MacOS.

[zachh]

Hi @SLapinsuo 

This would be more of a PowerPoint question than a Hubspot question. You may be able to use an extension like this to pull the data, but I can't speak to how you would manipulate the data within PowerPoint.

If you're open to the Google Docs ecosystem, they do have Google Apps Script which should be able to accomplish this in a Slides presentation. I've used this on a few occasions to pull data from the API into a Google Sheet and it works surprisingly well.

- Zach

[Ben_M · Accepted solution]

All the API documentation is here for reference: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/overview

You could fetch the data from the API, but maybe it would be easier to just automate a report of Deals and have that scheduled to send to you on the cadence of the meetings then you have it ready for you. To the point of Powerpoint utilizing the API, that is more of a question for powerpoint, but I don't recall having the ability to pull in external data soures in that. So you would likely have to pull it into Excel and then drop the Excel table into Powerpoint making this more complex then it needs to be.

[SLapinsuo]

I actually found a prospect solution (https://www.presentationpoint.com/software/datapoint/). I've been testing it for about a week now and was able to get data from HubSpot Deals into PPT elements. It works quite nicely, but I now ran into an issue with being able to fetch only 100 rows at a time with one API call. In other words, I might not be able to use pagination with the software. I'm waiting to hear from the vendor on this. Thanks @Ben_M !