I manage a Family Office and do monthly performance presentations with PowerPoint, the slides have an unique design, and updating them every month became extremely tedious and error prone.
I was already looking for an excuse to learn Python and this was perfect.
Instead of recreating the slides I created templates (just the last set of presentations) and update them with info directly queried from the database, using python-pptx and pyodbc.
This isn’t exactly an example of a “tool”, but I think the most important part isn’t really the tool, but to be able to identify what you can automate. How you do it might range from DIY to paying someone to code for you, but the feeling after getting rid of manual processes is great!
From the past 10 years of side projects, I can definitely confirm that the most important skill one could have is recognizing what can be automated, and especially, what is worth the effort of automating. - Your example is definitely a good one!
Also at an FO here, this is great. We started templating everything last year and it’s been a huge relief.
Project management in Asana we also turned into templates, things are simple but flow so much easier.
I was already looking for an excuse to learn Python and this was perfect.
Instead of recreating the slides I created templates (just the last set of presentations) and update them with info directly queried from the database, using python-pptx and pyodbc.
This isn’t exactly an example of a “tool”, but I think the most important part isn’t really the tool, but to be able to identify what you can automate. How you do it might range from DIY to paying someone to code for you, but the feeling after getting rid of manual processes is great!