We have a Fillable PDF that we get from a state agency that we have to submit for a given client on a regular basis. Almost all the data that goes into this form is already in Airtable. We have been using Formstack to do this, but it is very expensive and we are no longer using the other document template to create something in Word using Airtable fields. This makes it no longer worth the investment, but this is a pretty tedious task, and I don’t want to put it back on our staff to complete.
We do use Make a lot. Is that a solution? Make + PDFFiller?
We don’t have a PDFFiller account, but that seems pretty reasonable. We don’t have the underlying PDF template (it’s from an external source). Will that matter?
If this is a viable solution, I think I can figure it all out. I just don’t want to spend time on this path only for it not to work!
Yes, I believe that this should be possible with Make + PDFFiller.
I haven’t done this myself yet, but I’ve advised people on the Internet to go down this path, and they didn’t come back to tell me that it didn’t work!
Maybe try it with just a few fields to see if you can get the beginnings of it working! And then report back here with your results!
The need to blend data with documents is an increasing requirement in almost all no-code solutions. If you’re not trying to blend data with documents, you’re probably trying to meet reporting requirements which are simply a variant of blending data with documents.
Bluntly, I don’t like any of the usual and customary pathways. I believe the best part is no part (i.e., no external processes and tools). SmartDoc (in SmartSuite) might deliver on my idea of a perfect solution.
I have used SmartDoc with the SmartSuite API, and it was successful. Unfortunately, this required the use of the SmartSuite API. However, my in-depth observation (Document and Data Tension: Polarized Perspectives) suggests SmartDoc will soon eliminate the need to merge data with external document formats, and then pull them back in as attachments, for example.
SmartDoc (when updated as the SmartSuite CEO indicates) will take us one step closer to a seamless development and user experience for data + documents. But the future looks even brighter if you read the second comment from the CEO -
I don’t know if you’re open to a bit of coding, but I implemented a similar feature for our company recently to generate invoices based on 100% Airtable data. I had good success using Google Sheets and a Google Apps Script. Later on I switched to MS365 and Power Automate + Excel (because the company switched to that environment, not because I wanted to), which was definitely less convenient, but also worked in the end.
