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How to make better presentations faster?

Automate a bibliography and save time for all your presentations


Every student has been there: every presentation, dissertation or assignment requires extensive research and an exhaustive bibliography. A tedious task that makes us procrastinate... (#beentheredonethat)
Whether it's for personal reading, a presentation to be prepared or a study to be published, we always end up with a billion tabs open, a slow computer and embarrassing screen sharing during video!

Starting point: the limits of old-style source collection

For my quarterly newsletter, I'm always on the lookout for nuggets to share on digital and tech news. I therefore collect many articles that I risk losing track of.

In order not to miss anything, I have created a Notion page in which I paste all my sources for the next issue.
This is already a good first step, as I am relieving my browser of a lot of reading to catch up on later. However, it also requires me to copy the title of the article so that I know quickly what it is about when I open the link for the choice of topics to share.

In addition, some of the articles are closely related to the same subject and I am trying to group them into toggles to find my way around.

Which Nocode stack to automate source collection?

You will have understood my brief. I would like :

  • save links without keeping tabs open or overloading my favorites bar
  • easily find all my sources in one place
  • know at a glance the content of the link (title, date, link, author, etc.)
  • and all this in an automated way, of course!


Fortunately, others have asked themselves the same questions and have already planned an automation template on Zapier, a Nocode platform that allows applications to be connected to automate tasks.

Among the many use cases that optimise note-taking, I'm looking at this one that fits my brief perfectly: connecting the Pocket app to Zapier.

Connect Pocket to Zapier

Prerequisite: download Pocket and create a Drive folder

I quickly downloaded Pocket, available on Android and iOS, as well as its Chrome extension, as this is my most frequent use case.

I create a Google Drive folder that I call "Newsletter" and a file "NSL #5" to prepare the next publication.

Preliminary #1: feeding your list on Pocket

I connect my newly created Pocket account and feed it with a first article that I label "newsletter". 

I open another article in Chrome and I also add it to my Pocket list (thanks to the extension) and give it the "newsletter" label.

Adding a site to Pocket

This is crucial! You must label your backups so that Zapier recognises them.

Naming Zap with Pocket

So I did a test with 2 contents but one would have been enough. There are many ways to add content to your list (also on mobile) but I chose my most common use case on desktop.

Preliminary #2: being ready on Google Drive

The setup has been done on the source side, now we have to prepare their destination!

We create a Drive folder containing a file that will receive the links of the articles that we save in Pocket.


Step 1: Open Zapier and connect to your Pocket and Google Drive accounts

Zap with Pocket and Google Docs

As I work in a world at the cutting edge of Tech, surrounded by Nocode Experts, I of course already have a Zapier account 🕶️

  • The connection to Pocket works like clockwork and my content is immediately identified! ✅ (#petitevictoire)
  • I am automatically redirected to the next step: connect Drive, very simple ✅
  • Since Zapier is super smart 💡 (and I cheerfully gave permission to go digging in my Drive #bigdata), it/he/she automatically finds my folders ("Folder") and a search bar allows me to select the right one ("Newsletter") and connect it to the destination file ("Docuement Name", "NSL #5) ✅
Connecting Google Doc to Zapier
Google Doc connection on Zapier

Step 2: Customisation

This is where it gets really interesting! Remember my manual handling mentioned at the beginning... Here, I choose exactly how my source is listed. I choose to display: a custom text + the title of the article + its link
Depending on your use case, you can also select the date of the content, its author etc.


Step 3: Test and validate

Nothing more to say, I did my job well in the previous steps so the test worked, I activated my "Zap" and everything works!


How long did it take me?

It's time for a reckoning!

  • It took me a good 15 minutes to install Pocket (app, extension) (and I must admit I watched a tutorial extract to understand the interface).
  • 5 min of configuration on Pocket
  • 10 min in total to be guided by the hand on Zapier and have a working Zap

All in all, it took me half an hour, I have set up a process that will save me a lot of time.


And for the unquantifiable, there is the pride of having automated a task that too many of us still do manually and the opportunity to impress a few people around me.

The calculation is quickly done! Your turn 👉


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