Build Automated Slides From Any Software For Your Company TV

The best content for your company TVs is already in your team software. Your team schedule is stored in software. As are HR updates, sales stats, marketing results, and much more.

The trouble is in getting the data out of your software and turning it into signage-ready slides. You could open your team calendar, find an upcoming event, copy the details, then open Google Slides or PowerPoint and turn the info into a slide. That’d take at least 10 minutes, every time there’s an update in team software that you want to share.

Or, you could get ScreenCloud to listen for new notifications from work software, and turn them into slides automatically. Here’s how to set it up, and keep your team updated without spending time to turn data into slides.

Connect Any Software to Signage

ScreenCloud comes with over 70 built-in app integrations. The native Weather, Stocks, and News apps keep your team informed about the world around them. Connect Slack or Microsoft Teams to flag important messages for the whole team to see, or link Outlook or Google Calendar to show new upcoming events automatically. Canvas for one-off slides. Canva to share more detailed designs. And so on.

Everything else requires a workaround. ScreenCloud includes a handful of great options. For Pro and Enterprise plans, our Dashboards tool lets you scrape any widget from your software, to turn what otherwise is an in-app dashboard into something you can share with your whole team. Or, with Playgrounds, you can code a new slide with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—or get ChatGPT to code it for you—then push new data to your slide with Webhooks.

Those same Webhooks can power a new, easier way to build slides from any app: ScreenCloud’s Webhooks app. It listens to your app for notifications, then automatically turns them into formatted slides (here’s a more in-depth exploration of how webhooks work, if you’re new to them). With a few minutes of setup, your company TV will turn into the notifications center for your business.

It works like this:

1. Create a new ScreenCloud Webhooks app instance, and copy your unique Webhooks URL and API key
2. Either add that Webhooks data directly to the software you want to connect to ScreenCloud, or if that’s not supported, connect your software to an automation tool like Zapier or Microsoft Power Automate then have the automation pass the data on to ScreenCloud
3. Add your new ScreenCloud Webhooks app to your company TV channels or playlists for automated slides from your software’s webhook notifications.

Here’s how to set it up.

First: Does your software support webhooks?

Depending on your software, you might be able to connect your app directly to ScreenCloud’s Webhooks app.

To do so, your app needs a webhooks tool—typically found in your app settings, integrations, or sharing options. That webhooks integration needs to support sending POST requests with a custom JSON body formatted the way ScreenCloud expects.

MailChimp, for example, includes everything you need to share data about new subscribers and form completions to your company TV in the Journey Builder. Create a workflow that runs whenever you get a new subscriber or form completion, add a webhooks step, and you can customize the JSON body to match ScreenCloud’s needs.

Many other apps support webhooks, but don’t let you customize the output. WordPress, for example, lets you choose to notify a webhooks URL when a new post is published and a comment comes in, but you can’t customize the data that WordPress sends. Same for many form apps including Typeform, and eCommerce tools like Shopify.

A far wider variety of software—including payment gateways like Stripe and chat tools like Slack—supports webhooks through their API and developer-focused SDKs. There’s no UI to set up webhooks, but developers can build support into 3rd party apps to tap into the data.

For those, and other business software that doesn’t support webhooks at all, you’ll need to build an automation.

Or, Build an automation.

Zapier, Make, Microsoft Power Automate, and other similar automation tools are the best way to build webhooks powered integrations. They’re already connected to hundreds of popular business software. Just search their app directories to see if your company’s software is supported—odds are, it is.

You’ll then make a new automation that watches your app for new data. A new Stripe payment, a new starred Slack message, a new Salesforce lead. Follow that with a filter, if you want your automation to only run when specific types of payments or messages or other items come through.

Then, add a Webhooks action to send the data on to ScreenCloud.

Build a new Webhooks app in ScreenCloud

Now that you know your software’s ready to connect, head back to ScreenCloud to get your webhooks URL and API key.

Open ScreenCloud’s Apps tab, search for Webhooks, create a new Webhooks App instance, and copy your unique webhooks URL and API key–and be sure to save them somewhere safe, as this is the only time you’ll be able to access that API key.

Head back to your software or automation tool, and build out your webhook action to send data the way ScreenCloud Webhooks expects. The steps will depend on your app. In Zapier, for example, you’ll add a Webhooks action to a workflow, choose the Custom Request action, then select the POST method. Paste your ScreenCloud Webhooks URL in the URL field.

Jump down to the bottom of the Zapier action form, and add two headers as in the image above:

• X-API-Key, followed by your API key in the second field
• Content-Type, followed by application/json

Now build out the JSON body. Copy the code below, replacing each bit of text in the request with the correct item. In Zapier, for example, you might select Sample Title, then replace it with a Zapier variable to have Zapier auto-add data from your software as the title of your ScreenCloud Webhooks POST body. And you don’t have to send details in every field, every time—ScreenCloud will take whatever data you send, and turn it into a nice-looking slide automatically.

{
  "items": [
    {
      "itemId": "12345",
      "dateCreated": "2024-02-01T12:00:00Z",
      "lastEditedTime": "2024-02-01T12:30:00Z",
      "messageUrl": "https://example.com/message/12345",
      "author": {
        "displayName": "David Jones",
        "profileImage": {
          "url": "https://example.com/profiles/davidjones.jpg"
        }
      },
      "content": {
        "title": {
          "content": "Sample Title"
        },
        "body": {
          "content": "This is a sample body content for the hook."
        }
      },
      "attachments": [
        {
          "contentType": "image",
          "url": "https://example.com/images/sample.jpg"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

A few things to note:

• Dates need to be in ISO format, with date and time, but without timezone. Items with the most recent dateCreated time will be shown first in the ScreenCloud Webhooks app
• If the messageURL is set, ScreenCloud will show a QR code on the slide.
• For image attachments, set the attachments contentType as image, and send a link to the image. For other attachments, set the contentType as link.
• The body content field will be displayed as a single paragraph. ScreenCloud removes all paragraph and line breaks, and shows up to 250 words in a single slide. If your webhooks request includes more text, ScreenCloud will truncate it to show the first 250 words or so.
• Skip any fields that you don’t plan to use. ScreenCloud will only show the data you send to the Webhooks URL, using the correct slide layout for your content. Send only a title for a large text slide, or send an image, title, and body for a more detailed slide.
• Want to update an existing slide? POST your webhook body with the same ID number and dateCreated, but with a newer lastEditedTime to overwrite the original message.
• Want to customize your slide style? Change your company’s branding first from ScreenCloud’s Look & Feel settings tab, and the style will be reflected in your slides.
• Check ScreenCloud’s full webhooks developer docs for more info

That may require tweaking a few things. Zapier’s default date field, for example, includes the timezone. Add a formatter step to your Zapier workflow, first, to convert the date to the correct format for ScreenCloud before adding it to your webhook request body. And you may need to add if/else branching to watch for the data that comes through, to build out the correct webhook body.

Then, test and turn on your automation or your software’s built-in webhooks integration to send the data to ScreenCloud. Switch back over to ScreenCloud, preview your Webhooks app, and you’ll see your newly formatted data on your slides.

Add Webhooks-powered app data to your ScreenCloud channels and playlists

Your new Webhooks app is now ready for your screens. Push it directly to a screen for a full-screen notifications center for that app. Add it to a playlist to show in series with your other software and slides. Or, add it to a channel to schedule signage content.

The Webhooks app displays content differently depending on where you place the content. In a larger section that takes up at least a third of the screen, it’ll show full slide content—including images and text. In a news ticker-style thin footer, it’ll show just the title content text, without any longer body text or images.

Every time your app or automation sends new data to your ScreenCloud Webhooks app URL, ScreenCloud will act as an online slideshow player and turn that data into a slide and add it to the beginning of the Webhooks slideshow. Each slide will show for 10 seconds, with the newest slides showing first. If your Webhooks app plays long enough, it’ll loop back to the most recent slide. Otherwise, older slides will slowly fall off the playlist.

Build more Webhooks-powered slides

Now that you’ve connected your first app’s notifications to ScreenCloud, it’s worth thinking through extra ways you could use Webhooks with your team.

Think through the software your team checks throughout the work day. Anything with notifications that your whole team needs to see is perfect to connect to ScreenCloud Webhooks, either directly or with an automated workflow. New contacts, customers, tasks, server warnings, updated event times, and more are all great additions to signage to keep your team informed.

Technical team members could connect in-house software to Webhooks, to show factory alerts, application uptime metrics, and more on signage. They could also use developer tools like Postman or Terminal to send one-off updates to your company screens.

One-off updates could also be sent with a form. Build a new form in your favorite app like Google Forms or Typeform that asks for title, body content, link, image, and author name. Build a Zapier or Make automation to send that data to ScreenCloud. Then share the link internally with your marketing, HR, ops, and other teams who need to share company-wide updates. Whenever something new needs to be shared, they can fill out the form, and seconds later the update will show up on signage. The same trick could work with Siri, AutoHotkey, or Stream Deck to send new messages to your company TV with a voice command or button push.

When to Use ScreenCloud Webhooks vs ScreenCloud Playgrounds?

ScreenCloud’s Webhooks app isn’t the only way to showcase app data on your office TV. ScreenCloud Playgrounds offers something similar, in custom-coded HTML and CSS slides.

The Playgrounds app is best for building custom screens that showcase a single value that’s automatically updated via Webhooks. For example, if you want to show today’s total sales in your store, or this month’s total website visitors, or this year’s OKRs—something where you only want to show the most recent item—then ScreenCloud’s Playgrounds app is the best option. Or, if you want to code a more detailed dashboard that shows multiple values—perhaps a financial dashboard with revenue, profit, expenses, and more—you can build that with Playgrounds, and keep it up-to-date with Playground’s built-in webhooks feature. Check our guide to building an auto-updating dashboard with Playgrounds for more details.

The Webhooks app, on the other hand, is best for turning app data into slides automatically. It’s great for building notification feeds, where new messages and older updates are shown one after another. Whether you want to build a custom integration with your team chat app, or build a unique HR feed, or show company updates from the executive team, it’s an easy way to build out notifications with no coding (beyond setting up a webhooks automation).

Always up-to-date signage with zero effort

Keeping your digital signage up-to-date is typically an ongoing challenge with static images and slides. The weather and schedule and other app-powered bits make your screen feel dynamic, but it’s all too easy for dated HR notifications to stay in your slide rotation if you build them manually.

Automate them with ScreenCloud Webhooks, though, and your signage will turn into a company equivalent of your phone’s lock screen with notifications from your apps about what’s most important. Instead of remembering to schedule new content for your screens, your apps will push the latest details to ScreenCloud, and ScreenCloud will turn that data into auto-formatted slides that’ll keep your team informed. Pair that with other smart office signage automations, and your company TVs will be the best place to check for news and updates in your office—without wasting anyone’s time keeping them up-to-date.

Take the Webhooks app for a spin—or, if you don’t have a company TV yet, signup for a free 14-day ScreenCloud trial to try it out.