Document Agent layouts best practices (Private Preview)

This article explains best practices for preparing the presentation that Templafy's Document Agent uses when generating presentations. The uploaded presentation consists of regular PowerPoint slides, where each slide represents a reusable layout the agent can select and populate with content.

Universal Document Agent uses AI to generate presentations from scratch while following your organization's branding and presentation standards. During generation, the agent selects from the collection of slides in the uploaded presentation, using each slide as an example of a layout and content structure. Following the recommendations below helps the agent choose the right slides and produce more accurate, consistent presentations.

Selecting the template

Start with your organization's default presentation template to maintain branding, typography, colors and visual consistency. Remove presentation-specific content and keep the slides you want the Document Agent to use when generating presentations.

The template should meet the same requirements as the default presentation template. Limited use of Dynamics is permitted.  

Editing the template

The quality of the uploaded slides directly impacts presentation quality. Include only slides that represent reusable presentation structures and remove slides that do not provide meaningful value during generation.

Remove

• Slides without meaningful content areas (for example, empty or title-only slides)
• Duplicate or near-identical slides that serve the same purpose.
• Outdated, presentation-specific or one-off slides.

Keep and add

Include slides that represent the presentation structures your organization uses most frequently. The more variety of reusable slide types you provide, the more flexibility the Document Agent has when generating presentations.

Consider including slides such as:

• Title/cover
• Divider/breaker
• End slide / Thank you slide
• Executive summary
• Agenda
• Key findings
• Recommendations
• Process and timeline
• Comparison or before-and-after
• Customer story or case study
• KPI and metric summaries
• Tables for structured information and comparisons
• Charts for visualizing trends, performance or quantitative data
• Conclusion and next steps
• Team slide/ Bio slide

Example

Example collection of slides for a Document Agent presentation:

• Cover/title.
• Agenda (differentiated by number of items it can hold).
• Divider/breaker.
• Content heavy layout options
• Multi-column/ comparison (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 columns).
• Timeline/framework/process.
• Executive summary.
• Use case specific (case study, Customer Success story, methodology, customer testimonial/quote, KPI/ROI, conclusion/key takeaways).
• Data visualization layouts or dashboard style slides
• Closing/thank you.

Optimizing the template for AI compatibility

AI models rely on clear structure and descriptive context to understand which slide to choose and where generated content belongs.

• Use clear and descriptive titles for your layouts, such as "cover", "conclusion", or "team with four members".
•  Apply the same approach to placeholders in these layouts, like "title", "subtitle", "KPI1", or "team member role 1". 
• Also, ensure the text within placeholders is specific, for example, "role description 1". This makes your content easier to understand and use. 
• For number placeholders use realistic sample values within the placeholder, like "98%", "$ 5.4 million", "1.0", rather than "XX" or "00". Prefer to use symbol based units (%, $, €) over spelled-out units.
• Use systematic numbering for placeholders to keep everything organized. Avoid duplicate names.
• Apply a consistent naming format to all layouts and placeholders, e.g. start with content type, element type, then number.
  
• Review slide and placeholder names regularly, as descriptive naming improves the agent's ability to select the most appropriate slide
• Design title placeholders with enough space for longer generated titles.