Start from what you already know.
The context that makes a deck land is rarely on the prospect's website. It is in the notes on the account, on the link somebody sent you this morning, and on the page open in front of you right now. These are the three ways that context reaches the deck without you retyping it.
Everything the account has already taught you reaches the deck, without retyping any of it.
A prospect's website is the same thing their competitors read. The notes on the account are yours alone: the discovery calls, the objection raised last Tuesday, which products they trialed, who has gone quiet. The deck should be built from those, and what closes should shape the deck after it.
And what closes teaches the next one. Outcomes feeding future generations is the loop we are building.
- The seed deck
- The CRM record (notes, context)
What it does, and what it does not
What does it actually pull from a record?
The record's own fields including custom fields, firmographics, the description, the opportunity fields for the focal deal, activity history covering logged calls, emails, tasks and events, notes, Chatter posts, and the metadata of any attachments. What comes back is a summary under 600 words that quotes the customer's own language for what they asked for and what they pushed back on.
Do I have to start from an account, or can I pick a contact or an opportunity?
Any of them. Pick a contact and we resolve to the account behind it. Pick an opportunity and the account comes with that deal as the focal one the deck argues toward. Pick a lead and the lead itself is the prospect.
Does it download our attached files?
No. Attachments are recorded as references only: name, type, size, and a link back. A 40MB video attached to an account is never retrieved. The deck is built from the record, not from your file store.
What happens when it cannot make sense of a record?
You get no summary rather than an invented one. A thin record produces empty fields, the same way autofill already behaves, instead of a confident guess you would have to catch.
Do we have to create a Connected App or hand over credentials?
No. Nobody on your side creates an app registration or pastes a secret. An admin enables the integration once for the account, then each rep authorizes their own identity from their settings, so the record picker shows what each rep can already see.
Can one rep read an account another rep could not see in the CRM?
Within your DeckShift account, yes, and that is a deliberate trade rather than an oversight. The record picker is scoped to each rep's own CRM visibility, but once a prospect is imported the summary is account-scoped, the same as scrapes and decks already are. Tell us if that does not work for your org.
Does it learn from which deals actually close?
Not today. That loop is the ambition named in the callout above, and the honest position is that the telemetry which would feed it is running while the connection to deal outcomes is still ahead of us. Nothing on your slides is currently weighted by win rate.
The ten minutes before the meeting? More than enough.
Decks rarely start at a desk. You hear about a company on a call, in a forwarded email, walking out of another meeting. Hand the app a link, say what you need out loud, and the deck shifts while you walk in.
It shifts the seed deck your team already perfected, so what comes out still reads like you.
- The seed deck
- A voice note
- A URL
What it does, and what it does not
What can I actually send into it?
Whatever your other apps can put on the share sheet. On iOS, a URL or plain text. On Android, anything shared as plain text. Mail, a browser, a message, your CRM's own app, they all reach it the same way.
Will it stop mid-run to ask me questions?
No. Every question comes before generation starts, so locking your phone and walking into the meeting never leaves a deck parked on an unanswered question. If the pipeline wants more once you are gone, it proceeds with what it has.
How do I know when the deck is ready?
A notification, and not only on success. You hear when it is ready and you hear when it failed, because a scheme that only fires on success teaches you to distrust the silence. Decline notifications and the app shows progress while it is open instead.
Can I edit slides on my phone?
No, and that is deliberate. The app generates and it shares. Editing, reordering, locking, and critique review live in the web workspace, and the app links you there rather than shipping a cramped version of it.
Can I upload a new seed deck from my phone?
No. You pick from the decks your account already holds. Uploading a PowerPoint file from a phone is a path with no real person behind it.
Does it work on a plane?
No. Generation is a server pipeline, so the app needs a connection and says so plainly. It will not silently queue a deck and let you believe it is running.
It reads what you can read, so it works on your internal tools the first day, with no integration built.
A funding announcement, an annual report, a careers page, a competitor's pricing, a record in a tool we have never heard of. If you can read it, the extension can turn it into the starting context for a personalized deck, without a copy and paste round trip.
Research stops being a tab you meant to come back to.
- The seed deck
- The website
- A URL
What it does, and what it does not
What permissions does it want when I install it?
Not the one you are worried about. It does not ask to read all your data on all websites at install. It requests the active tab, and you grant a specific site the first time you capture on it. An extension that demands the whole internet up front is one a security team is right to block.
Is it reading pages in the background?
No. Nothing runs on page load, there is no polling, and there is no navigation listener. The extension reads once, when you click it, and then stops.
What exactly gets sent when I capture a page?
The rendered text you can see, the page title, and the URL. Not the contents of any form field, not passwords, and not the page's scripts or styles. A local log records the site, the time, and the byte count for every send, you can clear it, and it never leaves your machine.
Does it write anything back into my CRM?
No. It reads the page and starts a deck. Logging deck activity onto a CRM record needs the API integration, not the page-reading path, and that is a separate piece of work.
Can I build the deck inside the panel?
No. The panel captures the context and launches the generation, then links out. Slide editing, reordering, and export stay in the web workspace.
What about Firefox and Safari?
One build covers Chrome and Edge. Firefox differs enough to be its own piece of work and is not in this one. Safari needs a native wrapper and is further out again.
What happens if my laptop is stolen?
The extension never holds your password or your account session. It carries a device-scoped token with a narrow set of permissions, and you revoke it from your account settings. Anything the extension tries afterward is refused.