Presentations
Links, embedding and kiosks
A published deck can be shown beyond your workspace: through a link, embedded in another app or portal, or on a screen on the wall as a kiosk. Each shows the deck as published, in present mode — its slides in its own look, never the editor — and computes every figure with the link’s own access, never the access of the person who made it. A chart’s series take the deck’s colours, as in present mode and the exports: a series keeps one colour on every slide.
Links are on every plan, as a dashboard’s are. Share… → Links (or Links and embed… in its arrow) lists the deck’s links and makes new ones. Only the deck’s owner makes and revokes links (workspace and company admins act as owners); anyone else is told whom to ask. A deck has links once it is published: a link always shows the published version, never the draft, and a deck that is not published says Publish the presentation first.
Choose who opens it:
| Link | Who opens it |
|---|---|
| Anyone with the link | Whoever has the address, without signing in. |
| With a password | Whoever has the address and its password (8 characters at least). |
| Row security: only the rows you name | Whoever has the address; every figure shows only the rows you name, such as Region: West, North. It can be shown on a screen as a kiosk. |
Stops opening after sets a day the link expires (optional). Make link shows its address once — copy it then; DataSquares keeps no copy it could show you again. The list shows each link’s kind, its rows, its expiry, its views and who made it. Revoke asks first, then stops it opening at once and for good — a kiosk showing it too; a new link has a new address.
What a guest sees
Section titled “What a guest sees”A guest sees the slides readers see — the hidden ones left out, never the speaker notes — and moves through them with →, ↓, Space, Enter and Page Down (on), ←, ↑, Shift+Space and Page Up (back), Home and End, or on a touch screen with a swipe (to the left for the next slide, to the right to go back); slides advance by themselves when the deck does (its present options). Sources (or I) lists where each figure on the slide comes from. A swipe on the slide is the deck’s, so Chrome and Edge never take it for their swipe back a page; one that starts at the very edge of a phone’s or tablet’s screen is the device’s own Back (Safari on an iPhone or iPad, Android’s gesture navigation), which no page can claim. A pinch zooms the page; on a link, once the page is zoomed in, your finger moves the page and no slide. An embedded deck can’t tell that the page around it is zoomed in: a sideways drag over it always moves its slides, so drag beside it, or zoom out, to move the page sideways.
These keys move the slides whatever has the focus on the slide, as in present mode: only a text field you type in keeps them, and Space and Enter on a link in the slide follow it. A click on the slide tools under the slide leaves the keys with the slides.
A TV remote’s Back goes to the slide tools (Previous, Next, Pause, Sources, Full screen; in full screen, the exit control’s), on Pause or Resume where the slides advance by themselves: ← and → move along them, OK presses one (Sources opens the list), and ↑ and ↓ still move the slides. Back again closes the sources, or goes from the slide tools back to the slide. So a remote’s arrows, OK and Back reach everything but the rows of the sources list, which open a figure’s details and are reached with Tab only.
Full screen
Section titled “Full screen”Full screen (with the slide tools under the slide), or F anywhere outside a text field, shows the slide alone in your browser's full screen: no menu, no header, no toolbars or panels. Move the pointer, tap the screen or pressTab (the control is the first stop) to show the small Exit full screen control at the top right; it hides again after 2 seconds. Esc or F leaves, and puts you back on theFull screen button. A screen reader hears it go in and out.
In a desktop browser's full screen the browser takes Esc itself: it leaves full screen first, and a card's Expand, a dialog or a list you opened stays open, to close with its own control or a secondEsc. Where the view fills the window instead (below), Esc closes what is open first.
The access stamp stays under the slide. Previous, Next, Pause and Sources move into the exit control.
Where the browser doesn't allow full screen (a page embedded without the permission, Safari on an iPhone), the same view fills the window instead, and says so once.
Every figure is computed for the link, not for you:
- A figure from a metric or a model measure is read only from data with no row security. One from data with row security is a dash: This figure isn’t available with your access. A link has no one a row-security rule could name, so it is never given rows meant for others.
- A field with a sensitivity label is never shown in clear.
- A saved query’s figure is not shown when its data has row security or a labelled column, and never through a row-security link: its rows can’t be narrowed to the link’s.
- A dashboard visual is not shown: a guest can’t open its dashboard.
- A figure written into a sentence when the deck was made is not sent; a guest sees the figure computed for the link.
A row-security link shows only the rows it names, ANDed after every other filter of the deck, and each figure says so in its scope line (West, of Region). A figure whose data has no field of that name shows nothing through the link — never every row.
The access stamp
Section titled “The access stamp”A link to guests carries a stamp under every slide, as an export does: Prepared with Priya Raman’s access, the name of the person who made the link, and for a row-security link the rows it shows (Region: West). See check A3.
When a link stops opening
Section titled “When a link stops opening”A link opens no more, and answers exactly as a link that never existed, when:
- it is revoked, or past its expiry;
- its deck is deleted, archived or no longer published;
- Presentations is switched off for the company;
- the person who made it no longer has a role on the deck, or has left the company: a link never outlives its maker’s own access.
A password link asks for its password before it says anything about its deck, so a wrong password never tells whether the deck is there. Only wrong passwords are counted, wherever the link’s password is asked; a right one never counts, however many people open the link together. Ten wrong ones within 15 minutes lock the link, however many are sent at once: passwords are checked a few at a time and the rest wait their turn, so a burst can’t get past ten. Locked, it refuses every password, the right one too, until the oldest wrong one is 15 minutes old. When very many passwords reach one link at the same moment, those past the line are asked to try again in a few seconds. The list shows the owner Locked until a time, and Unlock lets it take its password again; each lock and unlock is in the audit log.
What a link records
Section titled “What a link records”What a link shows is recorded when a slide is first shown through it and again only when what it shows changes — a value, or a figure turning from provisional to final — never on every view. Records lists when a link showed each slide, but never its values: they were read with the link’s access, which is no person’s. A link reads a slide’s figures at most once a minute, however often and by however many it is asked: everyone asking while it is read shares that read, and within the minute it answers with what it read, a large slide too, and only for the version published now.
Embedding
Section titled “Embedding”An embedded deck shows present mode, never the editor, and has no Ask AI. On a touch screen it moves with a swipe, as a link does; a deck can’t see your page’s zoom, so on a page zoomed in a sideways drag over the deck still moves its slides (see What a guest sees). Share… → Embed offers two ways:
- A link’s snippet, on every plan, as a dashboard’s share link is. Make a link to embed makes a link anyone
with it opens, and gives an
<iframe>snippet for your page. Everyone who sees it sees the same slides, with the link’s access and stamp. Revoke the link under Links to take the embed down. The sites a link may be embedded on are the workspace’s allowed embed domains. - An embed app, part of the Embedding key on Business. To show each person of your product their own rows, a company admin adds the published deck to an embed app under Administration → Embedding: your server signs a short-lived token for each person, and the embed opens the deck for them alone. A person who is a member of your workspace (internal embedding) reads it as themselves, and only if they have a role on the deck. A dashboard visual is shown in DataSquares only: in an embed, as through a link, it says so in its place. Your own customers (customer-facing embedding, on Enterprise) read it as a guest, through the app’s row rules on their attributes. Each embedded view is counted as a dashboard’s is.
Kiosks
Section titled “Kiosks”A kiosk puts a deck on a screen on the wall — a sales floor, an operations room — through a kiosk link: a row-security link’s kiosk address, never a person’s session. When you make a row-security link, As a kiosk on a screen gives its kiosk address, with Read the figures again every minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes or hour (5 minutes unless you choose).
On the screen:
- The slides advance on the deck’s own timings (its present options, 10 seconds a slide unless set) and loop; the kiosk takes no keys, clicks, swipes or pinches (a touch screen on the wall never zooms in) and shows no controls. To set the screen up, move the pointer: Full screen shows at the top right for 2 seconds. F does the same.
- Every slide’s figures are read when the kiosk starts, then every slide again on that cadence — a minute at the least. A slide coming on screen reads nothing: it shows what the last read found, or Not read yet before its first.
- The foot of the screen always says when the figures it shows were computed, the oldest of them, and when they are read next: Figures as of 09:12 UTC · next read 09:17. While it reads them the first time it says Reading the figures…; if those first reads fail, Not read yet · next read 09:02, with The values could not be read yet under it (or Offline: no values read yet), never the last values read; nothing on a deck without figures. It is set to be read across a room, its size taken from the screen’s width as live captions are (2.2% of it, 18 pixels at the least: 42 pixels on a screen 1,920 pixels wide), the access stamp beside it.
- When a slide’s read fails, the screen keeps that slide’s last values, marked; the line turns amber with a warning sign, and a line under it says why (The values could not be read again (last read 09:12): showing the last values read, or Some values (1 of 4 slides) could not be read again); the other slides are read as usual. A slide never read has no last values, and the line says so: Some values (1 of 4 slides) could not be read yet, or Some values (2 of 4 slides) could not be read: 1 not read yet, 1 showing its last values. A slide whose read failed because DataSquares couldn’t be reached, had a problem, or was asked too often waits twice as long before each next try, up to half an hour (or the cadence, if longer). When the connection drops the screen says so, and it reads everything at once when the connection comes back.
- Each picture is read when its slide first comes on screen. One that could not be read is tried again with the figures, less often each time, never each time its slide comes back.
- When the deck is published again, the screen shows the new version. When the link is revoked or expires, or its deck is no longer published, the screen clears and says This link no longer opens. It checks again after twice the cadence, then twice as long each time, up to half an hour, and shows the deck again once the link opens — its deck published again, say, or Presentations switched back on.
- A record is written only when what the screen shows changes, not on every refresh.
A kiosk shows a kiosk link only and never asks for a password; opened with any other link it says why (This screen shows a kiosk link. Ask the presentation’s owner for one: Share → Links → Row security, then copy its kiosk address.). What it says when something is wrong (This link no longer opens, DataSquares can’t be reached) is set large enough to read across the room too. A control reached with the keys or a TV remote on the black screens of present mode, a link and a kiosk is ringed in white with a black edge, so the ring is seen over any slide, light or dark.