Automate Notion Covers with Make.com and Google Slides
Learn how to automate your Notion covers using Make.com and Google Slides, streamlining your workflow and enhancing your productivity.
Notion pages and gallery views are boring without covers. But creating them is tedious. Here is a simple trick on how you can automate the creation of Notion covers to make your Notion environment more awesome!
Introduction
I wanted to automate the creation of Notion Covers for a simple reason: To make my Notion Dashboard more neat, inspiring and on brand. For that I created a simple automation, that creates a text based cover, whenever I update a page name. This is what my project list looks like now:
Step 1 – Create a Google Slides Template
Create a template in Google Slides and change it’s dimensions to 1500x600. Create a centred text field that should be roughly 28.5 cm wide and 6-7 cm tall. Choose the text size to be around 100. Style it to your liking and save it in a place where you can find it.
Define a variable for the template by using curly brackets, like in my case {{Page Title}}. The Google Slides module in Make.com is later going to find anything in curly brackets and makes it replaceable.
This is what my template looks like:
Step 2 – Create the Make.com scenario
My Make.com scenario is a simple 6 step process.
It is triggered by a webhook, that receives the name of the trigger page alongside other information from Notion. Set up a test database in Notion, so you can teach Make.com the data structure.
In this case you can create a database button, that sends a webhook provided by Make.com module “Custom Webhook”. Copy the address an and paste it into the Notion Button automation.
Next, use the Google Slides module “Create a Presentation from a Template”. Under Values you’ll find your variable “Page Title” as defined in the Google Slides template. Choose the plain text version of your Notion page name, as sent from the webhook. I use the same value for the page title.
Add another Google Slides module “Get a Presentation”, this time to receive the information from the newly created slide deck. We are going to need that information in the next module. The presentation ID can be used from the previous module.
As Google Slides only outputs links to its slide deck, we are going to have to transform that slide deck into an image. We can achieve that via an API call, that outputs a Thumbnail to the presentation. I found the resolution to be satisfying for my use case, so I did not bother with other conversion methods.
Use the Google Slides module “Make an API call”. The URL Scheme is as follows:
/v1/presentations/{presentationId}/pages/{objectId}/thumbnail
Replace the curly bracket items with dynamic values from your previous modules.
You can find the {presentationId} from your second module, where you created the new presentation. For the {objectId} refer to the third module “Get a presentation” and chose the objectId under slides.
You can leave the body empty. This is what it should look like:
To not create too much clutter, I use the Google Drive module “Delete a File/Folder” next. You point it to the Presentation ID from the previous modules. This deletes the newly created presentation, so you don’t end up with useless Google Slide Presentations in a folder.
Now you want to update your Notion page. Choose the module “Update a Page”.
As the Page ID choose the ID received by the webhook. The Cover URL link is provided by the Google Slides API module. Chose “body: contentUrl” as the value.
Don’t forget to save your Make.com scenario. Never forget to save!
Step 3 – Connect to any Notion Database
Here are some good news! You can use this workflow in ANY database you choose! You are not limited to triggering it from just one database and not just from a database button. Sweet! How?
First, make sure your database has a connection to Make.com.
Next, set up a database automation, that triggers each time you edit the title. As an action choose “Send a webhook” and make sure, the name of the database item is sent with the webhook.
As we are triggering the workflow with a webhook, that provides all the necessary information to Make.com, we can reuse this same automation in other databases, too.
Beyond simple text based cover pages
For me, the text based output is enough for now. Here are some ideas if you want to go beyond this simple setup:
- Use Dall-e or any other AI tool to create an image for you, based on the title or other information. (I considered that but for me it seemed overblown and too expensive in token usage and too slow in the process)
- Create several Google Slides Templates with different colors. Trigger the automation each time the status of a Database item changes. In Make, pick a different template, depending on the status by means of a router. Could be awesome for Project Management.
- Let any AI pick a fitting emoji for you as a page icon.
- Include images in your Google Slides template. Maybe the logos of your clients or so.
Ready to step up your Notion game and automate your workflows?
If you want to push your business forward without burying yourself in repetitive tasks, let’s talk. I’ll help you create custom Notion environments and powerful automations—so you can focus on what matters most.