ShowPoint needs to be installed on each computer you want to use as a presentation machine. After the installation you can start the ShowPoint application by clicking Start > All Programs > PresentationPoint and click the ShowPoint item.

ShowPoint in Started mode will scan the presentations folder for the latest presentation and it will automatically start the slide show.

In Stopped mode it aborts the running slide show and it stops monitoring the presentations folder.

With the New file detection setting you can specify how to look for an active slide show. In all cases ShowPoint is looking at the timestamps of the Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that can be found in the specified presentations folder.

With the Created, Last modified or Last accessed options you instruct ShowPoint to look at the created, last modified or last accessed time stamp. The presentation with the latest or highest time stamp is considered as the active presentation.

The presentations folder is typically a shared folder on a server computer or network share and it can be accessed from multiple locations. The ShowPoint program needs read permissions to work correctly. You can set up different folders or shares for each group of presentation machines, e.g. one group per department.