Resources

Any organizer with write access to an event (conference or a particular session) can upload a file on behalf of a presenter. The fastest way to add a file on behalf of a presenter is:

1. Inside the event, click on “Search” to bring up the list of all presentations.
2. Start typing in the presentation title or the first or last name of the presenter.
3. Once the filtering starts narrowing down results and you see the presentation you want to upload a file for, click it.
4. Now you should be able to upload files as long as you’re either the admin of the event or has been given write permissions to that event or session.

Sometimes a speaker cancels last minute and you need to cancel the presentation. Other times you might need to move a speaker’s presentation to another session. Here are some common scenarios and how to handle them. The first few steps (to locate the presentation) is common for all actions:

How to quickly find the session of a presentation:

1. Inside the event, click on “Search” to bring up the list of all presentations.
2. Start typing in the presentation title or the first or last name of the presenter.
3. Once the filtering starts narrowing down results you’ll eventually see the presentation you are looking for. Click it to open it, then navigate one level above using the breadcrumbs (to get to the presentations’ session).

MOVE: Move a Presentation from one Session to Another

1. Click the row of the presentation to show its context menu.
2. Click on “Move” and select the session you wish to transfer the presentation to.
3. Confirm your choice. The presentation will now be moved to the last position (last presentation chronologically) in the other session.
4. Open the session you moved it to and drag-and-drop it to its correct position.

REPLACE: Replace an existing Presentation with a new one.

1. Click the row of the presentation to show its context menu.
2. Click on “Delete” to permanently remove this presentation slot from the session (and delete any uploaded files).
3. Confirm your choice. The presentation will now be removed from the session and the starting times of the other presentations in the session will automatically be re-calculated.
4. Add a new Presentation, enter the speakers details, confirm and re-order the presentation into it’s correct position.

CANCEL: Cancel a presentation from it’s scheduled session

1. Click the row of the presentation to show its context menu.
2. Click on “Delete” to permanently remove this presentation slot from the session (and delete any uploaded files).
3. Confirm your choice. The presentation will now be removed from the session and the starting times of the other presentations in the session will automatically be re-calculated.
4. Either add a break in the deleted presentations timeslot, add a replacement presentation or a placeholder presentation.

A presenter is a user who has at least one presentation slot in your event’s schedule. The fastest way to change a presenter’s information is to follow these steps:

1. Inside the event, click on “Search” to bring up the list of all presentations.
2. Start typing in the presentation title or the first or last name of the presenter.
3. Once the filtering starts narrowing down results and you see at least one of the presentations of the presenter you want to edit.
4. Click on one of the results, then go one level up (to list the presentations in the current session)
5. Now click on the presenter’s presentation slot to bring up its context menu.
6. You should now be able to change the presenter’s name and email address.
7. Save your changes.

If you’ve added the wrong details (first name, last name, email address) of a speaker for a presentation the best way to deal with this is to delete the presentation from its session and to add a new one with the correct information. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the session where the presentation is located.
2. Delete the presentation (first download any uploaded files, if necessary)
3. Add a new Presentation with correct presenter details.
4. Re-order the newly added presentation to its correct position in the schedule.

PS: If you’ve already sent out email invitations,  and the newly added presenter isn’t already in the system, you will have to send a new email invitation to the newly added presenter.

If you need to add files to a session that isn’t part of the normal presentation schedule you can add a “Placeholder Presentation” and set its duration to 0 minutes.

Move the placeholder to the beginning of the session (1st position). As long as you have set the duration to 0, it won’t affect the starting times of the other presentations in the session.

If you need to invite a moderator to upload their files for a session, just treat them like a normal presenter, but set the duration to 0 minutes and move them to the top of the session.

Placeholders are a collection of files that can be re-used across sessions. They are convenient when you want to distribute identical files to different rooms, without having to upload them again and again.

They are very useful when you have a set of media files, for example videos to be shown during breaks in all session rooms. Just upload the videos to a placeholder once and then click “Add Placeholder” and select “Add Existing Placeholder Presentation”.

If you modify the files in a placeholder that is used across sessions, all the sessions will get the updated files automatically. This also applies to deleting and adding files.

If you have a session with multiple presenters/presentations and you are planning on doing the Q&A for all presenters together, at the end of that session, you can either just add an empty Q&A placeholder presentation (and set its duration to the amount of minutes set aside for Q&A), or you can just add a Break.

If each presenter have X amount of minutes to present and Y minutes for Q&A, you can add small breaks between each presenter or inform the presenter’s that their presentation slot is X+Y minutes and that their presentation must not exceed X minutes for speaking, as the audience will need to have Y minutes for Q&A. The last option is probably the easiest if you have lots of short 10 min. presentations whereof 7 min is dedicated to the talk and 3 to Q&A for each speaker.

To give someone read-only access to either an event (and all it’s sessions) or a particular session (and all its presentations), you first need to add them to your account. Only the organizer can perform this action.

Once a person is invited as a co-organizer, you can give them read permission by opening a sessions Permissions List (click the padlock button, next to the settings button), selecting their name and choosing Read Only.

When that person now logs in they will be able to open and view that session as well as download and view any uploaded files.

The Preseria desktop app lets you browse the event’s sessions and download the uploaded presentations for each session to your hard drive for offline storage. When you are logged in and online it also regularly checks for updates and notifies you (without disturbing any currently running presentations) that there are updated presentation files available. Additionally, it has two modes; Technician Mode and Presenter Mode.

Technician Mode
When launching files from the Technician Mode, the file will be opened in the default application associated with the presentation file type. For example will .key files usually be opened in Apple Keynote on a Mac, but you will have to start the slide show by yourself.

Presenter Mode
When launching files from the Presenter Mode, the Preseria desktop app will automatically close and fade out any running presentation file and then open the next file in full screen mode on the projector/audience screen, ensuring seamless switches between presenters and their presentation material.

If you are planning to use the Preseria desktop app for displaying presentation files and seamlessly switch between presenters (Presenter Mode) then you need to install the software listed below (note that this mode is only available on Windows). If you only plan on using the desktop app for downloading and syncing files, then no other software is required (Technician mode).

Software required for Presenter Mode on Windows PCs:

1. Microsoft Office PowerPoint (2019/365 recommended)
2. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (https://get.adobe.com/reader/)

Additionally we recommend you follow event production best practices and use a “clean” laptop with a freshly installed version of Windows. Make sure it’s updated with the latest security patches (run Windows Update) and then consider disabling automatic updates before the event starts. Also consider disabling unnecessary apps from auto-starting on boot and any regular scheduled background tasks that might interrupt a presentation or slow down the computer.

When presenting PowerPoints, Microsoft Office automatically supresses notifications from the operating system, but that does not necessarily happen automatically when displaying PDFs or stand-alone video files.

No special hardware requirements are needed to run the Preseria desktop app, but a modern laptop is recommended to be sure that slide transitions, animations and high-resolution videos run smoothly. In other words; it depends on your content.

To be able to run the desktop app in Presenter Mode, you need a Windows laptop and a secondary display (projector or screen). The Presenter Mode will not run without having two displays configured in “Extended Desktop Mode” in the Windows display settings.

You can find links to the macOS and Windows versions of the desktop app in the desktop app installation guide.

Note: Currently only the Windows version supports Presenter Mode. The macOS version is limited to displaying the session schedules and downloading & syncing files.

The Windows version supports two modes: Presenter Mode and Technician Mode. On macOS only the Technician Mode is available.

You can read more about the two modes in the documentation:

• Presenter Mode
• Technician Mode

Ideally you would have all the presentation files downloaded to the presentation laptops in the different rooms before the event starts, but we all know that’s not how it works in real life. Last minute changes will be requested by presenters, and slides might have been re-uploaded from a Speaker Ready Room.

Our general recommendation is that you should only trigger the downloading of updated files during breaks. Downloading may take a while, depending on your network and the size of updated files, and you shouldn’t do anything that could potentially disturb the flow of the current presenter. Also, starting a download will close the currently running presentation and display your chosen background image for your current session.

Short version: Click the “Update Available” button during a break and when you know you have plenty of time to download the updated files.