Creating a new Chart Deck

Step 1 — Research Brief

Give your deck a name (e.g. Q1 Brand Tracker Results) and, optionally, provide a research brief so the AI understands the study context. You have three choices:

Click Continue to proceed, or Skip if you don't have a brief handy — you can always add one later.

Step 2 — Questionnaire

Select or upload the questionnaire document used for the survey. This helps the AI ground the presentation in the questions asked in the survey.

• If questionnaire files already exist in the project, pick one from the list.

• Otherwise, drag-and-drop a DOC, DOCX, PDF, or TXT file to upload.

Click Continue or Skip.

Step 3 — Data Source

This is where you connect your cross-tabulation data. Three options are shown:

You can also click Skip — I'll add data later to proceed without any data.

Uploading a cross-tab file

Click the upload area and select an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV (.csv) file up to 10 MB. Once uploaded, Metaforms automatically extracts individual tables from the file in the background. You can track extraction progress in the Cross-Tabs panel on the right:

• Extracting — a progress banner shows the file name while tables are being detected and parsed.

• Available — extraction is complete. A Build deck with AI button appears so you can kick off AI-generated slides from the extracted data.

• Failed — if extraction encounters an error, an error message is shown. You can clear the file and try again.

Selecting tables

When you choose Reference existing tabulations, all computed tables from your tabulation workspace are pre-selected. You can search by name or variable and toggle individual tables on or off. A summary shows how many tables are selected before you continue.

Step 4 — Choose How to Start

Pick one of three starting modes.

Blank

Creates an empty deck. The AI agent is kicked off automatically and will propose an outline based on whatever brief, questionnaire, and data you provided.

From Outline/Notes

Paste slide notes or a narrative outline. The AI splits your content into logical slides. The AI Agent follows your outline to generate the first draft. Example of a slide by slide outline notes is given below

Intro to our strategy
• Key finding 1
• Key finding 2
---
Key metrics from Q1
• Revenue grew 12%
• NPS up 8 points
---
Next steps
• Launch phase 2

Template

Browse your organisation's uploaded PowerPoint templates. Select one, then tell the AI how to use it:

• Use the design system only — apply colours and fonts but generate fresh content.

• Import both slides and content — clone the template as-is.

You can also type a custom instruction (e.g. "Import all slides and adapt the content for our Q1 report").

Step 5 — Create Deck with AI (cross-tab upload)

If you uploaded a cross-tab file in Step 3, the deck opens without the AI agent running. Once table extraction is complete, the Cross-Tabs panel on the right shows all extracted tables and a Build deck with AI button. Review the tables, then click Build deck with AI to start the AI agent — it will use the extracted data along with any brief or questionnaire you provided to generate your slides.