Pushing Out Themes to a Large Corporation

[Christine]

Is there any documentation, instructions or other general information about
pushing out and implementing customized themes for L A R G E groups of
people?

Multiple online searches have come up with nothing.

My small team of coworkers and I seem to be the only people concerned about
the development and implementation of themes for the large multi-national
corporation that we work for. They are about to "phase in" an upgrade from
Office 2000 to 2007 and we would like to include some custom themes at the
same time.

We have some almost ready and would like to approach our IT department with
something of a plan. The best that we could come up with so far is to push
the themes out w/ a login script. Is the the best/easiest option?? Are there
other ways to do this?

We would like to make the process as painless as possible for IT so they
will buy in.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or input. I'm sure we aren't the first group to
face this issue.

Thanks!
Christine

 

[Glen Millar]

Hi,

This is a darn good question. I haven't done it myself but I reckon it would
be as simple as a script as part of login to copy themes to each users
folder. Say, in

C:\Users\Glen\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Document Themes (is where
my saved themes are in).

I know someone I work with I can ask if I can find him on Monday.

--
Regards,
Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP

Tutorials and PowerPoint animations at
the original www.pptworkbench.com
glen at pptworkbench dot com

 

[Ellen Finkelstein]

Julie Terberg spoke about this a couple of years ago at PowerPoint Live. I
can't find my notes, but I don't remember her dealing with the technical
issues, but rather with usability issues.

For example, she talked about including instructions on how to use them.
She talked about including a wide variety of example slide layouts and design
elements to help non-designers understand how to add visual interest. She
talked about striking a balance between too many rules (text must be at least
this size, photo in this position only) and too few (just a title and body
slide). She suggested putting detailed instructions in the notes section and
directions for locating the company's digital photo library, if any. She
showed examples of design graphic layouts to be used in place of a list of
bullet points, and sample charts that she thought should be included.

This may be beyond what you're trying to do but I thought I'd mention it.

Ellen

 

[Christine]

Thanks Ellen!

I have copious notes from the excellent sessions both Julie and Echo did at
PPTLive this past September about how to put the theme and template together.
We aren't as concerned about photos because most of our slides are text or
graphs/illustrations/data (pharma company).

Our goal is to try and get the themes and accompanying templates pushed out
either as each user is switched over to 2007, or soon after. Our thinking is
that if the themes and templates are there when they start learning the
program, they will be more likely to use it and continue doing so.

Thanks for the notes reminder. I will definitely try and include that w/
our info. I think we may be putting together some mini instructional
videos/podcasts during the rollout to assist our users w/ the upgrade...at
least w/ the PowerPoint portion of it!

Christine

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi Christine

You may want to contact your local MS office. I know there is a guy here in
Adelaide whose job (amongst other things) is to help organisations move to
'07 - he asked me if I had stories to share that might help others. Just a
thought.

Lucy

 

[SteveP]

I might suggest something as simple as creating a master template file on
your server, then placing a shortcut to that file on your users' desktops or
quick launch bars. Then delete the shortcut to the PowerPoint program from
the desktops.

That way when they click the PPT icon (now the shortcut to the template),
they'll get your corporate theme.

Also with the template on your server, you can update the template by just
changing the one file, should you have a change of logo, or if your president
gets tired of the color. Make sure the template has read only privileges so
it doesn't accidentally get overwritten.

By using multiple masters, you can roll all your themes into one template
file, though that will take a little training. All the themes will be
available in the Design ribbon.

Steve Puffenberger
www.painfreepresentations.com

 

[Christine]

Thanks for your input Steve!

Unfortunately we are talking about one main company and multiple smaller
companies under their umbrella. This translates to some themes that will be
used by multiple companies and then other themes that will be used by single
companies.

To complicate things even further... each of the themes are VERY different
(totally different color palettes, look, etc.)

I'm not even sure how each of the IT departments work for each of the
companies...we might be able to place a file on the server for our
company...but another one may not be able to.

Very confusing I know....as well as a MAJOR headache!

Christine