PPTX Find and Replace

The core problem this plugin solves is eliminating manual document creation when Appian processes need to produce personalised PowerPoint outputs.

Concrete use cases Sales & presales — Proposal generation When a sales opportunity reaches a certain stage, the process auto-generates a branded proposal deck populated with the client name, solution scope, pricing, and consultant name. Removes manual effort per opportunity and ensures brand consistency. Financial services — Client reporting A scheduled process generates monthly or quarterly portfolio reports as PowerPoint files, one per client, using account data pulled from records. Distributed automatically without manual intervention. Regulatory & compliance — Evidence packs After a compliance check or audit process completes, the plugin generates a PowerPoint summary pack with the case reference, findings, dates, and outcome tokens replaced from the case record. Provides a consistent, reproducible output for every case. Contract & procurement — Award notifications When a procurement process reaches approval, a contract award slide deck is generated with supplier name, contract value, reference number, and effective date populated from the process variables. HR & onboarding — Offer documents An HR process generates an onboarding presentation per new hire, personalised with their name, role, start date, manager, and team. Eliminates a manual step that previously required HR to edit a template for every joiner. Field services — Job completion reports After a field service job is closed in Appian, a summary report deck is generated with engineer name, site, job reference, completion date, and findings. The report is immediately available to the customer or back-office team without waiting for someone to prepare it.

Expression Functions Available in the Expression Editor under Scripting Functions.

Function Description pptxFindReplace(templateDocId, keys, values, folderId, outputName) Parallel array token replacement pptxFindReplaceJson(templateDocId, replacementsJson, folderId, outputName) JSON map token replacement Both functions return the generated document ID (Document type).

Smart Services Found in the Process Modeler under Automation Smart Services → Document Generation.

Smart Service Key PPTX Find and Replace pptxFindReplaceV3 PPTX to PDF pptxToPdfV3 Both smart services expose the following outputs:

Output Type Description GeneratedDocId Document The generated file. Null if an error occurred. ErrorMessage Text Populated on error or if tokens remain unreplaced. Empty on success. Success Boolean true on success, false on any error.

Version Key(s) Changes 2.2.0 pptxFindReplaceV3, pptxToPdfV3 Fix: double extension (.pptx.pptx / .pdf.pdf); PDF DPI increased 150→300 for print quality 2.1.0 pptxFindReplaceV3, pptxToPdfV3 Fix: @DocumentDataType on GeneratedDocId output (type change required new keys); doc.setSize() fix for correct type in knowledge center; same fix applied to expression functions 2.0.0 pptxFindReplaceV2, pptxToPdfV2 Success boolean output; @DocumentDataType+@Name on output getter; document type fix attempts (populateExtensionInfo, contentService.create) 1.3.0 pptxFindReplaceV2, pptxToPdfV2 PPTX to PDF smart service; Success output on both smart services 1.2.0 pptxFindReplaceDoc, pptxToPdf Added PPTX to PDF smart service (PDFBox, pure Java) 1.1.0 pptxFindReplaceDoc ErrorMessage output, .pptx auto-append, input validate()