Process slide templates

Seventeen layouts, one required block

Seventeen templates carry the process purpose and one more lists it as a secondary role. What they share is the flowchart block, which is required by the vocabulary rather than optional: a process slide is expected to draw an actual flow with nodes and connectors. That is the difference between this and a slide of numbered boxes, and it is why a process slide can show a step that splits into two outcomes without you drawing anything by hand.

Branching is the point, not the exception

The purpose is described as branching flowcharts, decision gates and approval flows. Most slide libraries treat branching as the hard case and give you a row of chevrons; here it is the default case. If your process really is a straight line with no decisions, the same layouts still work through the flow steps list, where each step carries a label, a sublabel and its index.

What each step can carry

The slide title runs to forty characters and the optional description to a hundred and sixty. Steps in the flow steps list carry a label and a sublabel each. Some layouts add a centre badge, an icon with a title of twenty two characters and a caption of forty, for the thing the whole process revolves around, and a footer with a headline of forty eight characters and a caption of sixty four for the outcome. Grouped layouts hold up to four detail items under each stage.

Process against timeline

The test is whether the thing that orders your steps is a decision or a date. A process is ordered by what has to finish before the next thing starts. A timeline is ordered by the calendar, and eighteen separate layouts exist for it, with a period carrying a number, an icon, a label, a date and a body. Putting quarters into a process slide loses the dates; putting an approval flow into a timeline invents dates you do not have.

Pillars are not a process

Three or four things that are all true at once, in no particular order, belong on a pillars slide, and thirty three layouts carry that purpose. The giveaway is whether swapping two of your boxes changes the meaning. If it does not, they are pillars, and drawing arrows between them tells the reader something untrue about how the work happens.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Add the slide from the library

   From Library, filtered to the process purpose. Seventeen layouts come back, grouped by how much detail each stage carries.

2. Step 2

   Lay out the flow

   Add the nodes and connect them. A decision node with two outgoing paths is the case these layouts are built for.

3. Step 3

   Label each step in a few words

   A label and a sublabel per step. If a stage needs a paragraph, it is a section of its own rather than a node.

4. Step 4

   Say what it produces

   Use the footer headline and caption for the outcome, so the slide ends on the result rather than the last box.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Add, reorder and restructure slides.

Limits worth knowing

• Seventeen templates carry process as their primary purpose; one more lists it as secondary.
• The flowchart block is required by the purpose, so a process layout always expects a real flow.
• Titles are capped at 40 characters and the description at 160.
• Grouped layouts hold four detail items per stage, no more.
• Layout swap is filtered to one purpose, so a process layout cannot be swapped straight to a timeline.

Questions people ask

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