How Can I Use the Google Slides App?

The Google Slides App is a great way to incorporate your Google Slides presentations into your digital signage. The steps below provide guidance for  preparing your slideshow, and adding it to the Google Slides App.

The Google Slides App is available in the Signagelive Marketplace. If you are unsure how to find and use this, please see this article.  

How do I prepare my slideshow?

First things first, you will want to ensure that your presentation is ready for playback in Google Slides.  Next, you will want to Publish your slideshow to the web. You can do this by following these steps in the Google Slides interface:

• Select File
• Select Publish to Web
• Select the Link tab
• Select a duration for slides to ‘auto-advance’ (every 3 seconds by default)
• This will be the duration that each slide is shown, before progressing to the next slide
• Select Start slideshow as soon as the player loads
• Select Restart the slideshow after the last slide
• Select Publish

Top Tip: Once you have the public 'Publish to web' URL for your Slides presentation, you can just copy and paste that into the App and then configure the settings there.  

Please Note

The Google Slides app will only be able to retrieve information from a published/public facing URL. Therefore, please ensure that any Google Slides documents that are stored in Google Drive are not stored in privately shared folders, as this will result in a "Loading Content" error message. Click here for more information on file sharing with Google.

How do I upload my slideshow to the App?

Once you have added the Google Slides App to your network you can select it in the library, or move it to a playlist. From there you can;

• Enter Properties
• Add the live URL from the Publish to Web section of your presentation in Google Slides
• Select which settings you would like to use: Signagelive Preferences or Google Preferences
  • Google Preferences: These match the settings outlined in the previous section
  • Signagelive Preferences: Identical to Google Preferences, but the app will base its playback behaviour at widget level, rather than at the URL level (Handy if you want to control your widget from Signagelive, and use Google Slides as little as possible)
• Select or deselect the Restart the Slideshow after end - This will cause the content to loop until the assets duration is reached

Simply save your playlist to automatically update the changes to your player, or select Content > Publish to push this new widget to your player for the first time.

How can I update my slideshow?

Now that your slideshow is published to the web, you can simply update the Google Slides document with any changes, and this will then automatically update on your Signagelive Player the next time the asset loads in a playlist.

How can I find out more?

You can always search for answers with the Signagelive Help Centre, but rest assured we have a dedicated Support Team that is ready to assist you with any questions you may have. We are always here to help as best we can, so just contact us for any help you require.