Using a PDF for your form

School_Bus · 10-14-2020 08:52 PM

So I ran into a problem a few months ago, and I’ve been fighting with it ever since. Then a meteor fell out of the sky and hit me.

I have official government forms that I need to fill out for employees like W4s, and it’s important they look exactly right, but I couldn’t make a template using google docs that looked right, or even close to right, but I found a work around. You’ll need a Zapier account to make this work, but it’s pretty simple once you have that. Here’s how I did it

Create a zapier zap, that is built to catch webhooks.
Create a workflow that triggers a webhook, and point that webhook to the zap you created in step 1.
Create a google slide.
Make whatever PDF you want to use and image and set it to the size of the slide.
Create text boxes laid on top of the PDF where appropriate and create a placeholder. For example in a last name category you I use {{Last Name}}. Note! Zapier uses {{}} to denote a placeholder so it knows you want to replace that field.
Go back to your zapier zap and in the next “Do This” portion select google slides. You’ll need to Create Presentation From Template.
Follow the instructions on Zapier, but when you get to template, just select the Slide deck you created in step 3.
Create another do this, to either e-mail it or print it out, or whatever you want to do with it.

Since your using google slides, you should also be able to put in page numbers etc.

I think it’s sort of an elegant solution. I hope this helps a few of you.

School_Bus

@PocketSurvey I think doing it this way would allow you to get some of the page numbers and functionality you wanted.

PocketSurvey

Great info. Not really suitable for my 100-page documents though!

Really, AppSheet (Google) should fix this issue with PDF headers/footers/page numbers. It’s a cop-out to say its too hard!

I am sure the Google developers who wrote the PDF processor for DOCs could easily do it.

Business reports need it.

I cannot roll out our app to 100s of users using Appsheet, and so am subscribing to other no-code platforms so I can roll out to business users, due to the lack of that feature.

Fabian_Weller

This is really awesome. Thank you for sharing @School_Bus.
What will be the output? A PDF or a Google Slide?

It seems to be possible also with Integromat. Without the need of a webhook, but directly from the Google Sheet.

School_Bus

The output is a google slide, but that’s better then nothing. I know with zapier I can do another leg that allows me to e-mail it to my printer too. I’ll check out integromat, haven’t used it before

School_Bus

Oh, I’m looking at integromat… there is a lot of capability there!

School_Bus

@Fabian I see that you are doing it with google sheets, but I generally favor webhooks since it sends the data to include my virtual columns. A lot of times I use my virtual columns for logic or simple math, and I don’t store that in the google sheet. So having it send as a webhook is really beneficial. Just my technique.

School_Bus

maybe one of you can help me solve this. How would I insert a signature into the google slide? I see integromat allows adding images using a url, how would that be used to change the signature?

Fabian_Weller

Here it says:

Tip: to pass images onto the template, you just need to create a text placeholder variable on your presentation template, then pass on a URL to a hosted image on your Zap template.

Have you tried this?

Or what would happen if you just put the Signature’s column name into the placeholder like {{Signature}} ?

School_Bus

@Fabian
Now I feel dumb for asking. I tried assigning a signature to the {{placeholder}} before, but with PDFfiller and it didn’t give me a signature. Now when I do with with slides I get the signature. This is going to make things a lot easier for me.

@Simon_Krismer and @Fabian is there a way to automatically change this? I’m not sure how to make this happen.

Fabian_Weller

Do you mean to change the Google Slide URL with the /export/pdf ?
One way that comes in my mind is: When you create a new Google Slide with Integromat, I think you can get the File ID of the new created Slide. Then you could send a webhook to your AppSheet App, to update the row with the URL. A concatenate like this:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ & <<File ID>> & /export/pdf

School_Bus

Wow, I’m really going to have to spend some time in integromat to figure it out.

School_Bus

@Fabian and @Simon_Krismer let me know if you ever get that working with integromat because I’m just can’t seem to make it work, and I’d like to know how you all pulled it off.

To let you know what I tried
webhook -> Create Google Slide -> HTTP (Get File) -> Gmail

I get an e-mail, but then it requires a username password to access the google drive, and when I do that it tells me the link is blank. So I’m completely lost here

School_Bus

after hours of bumping my head into a wall another meteor hit.

So this is how I used integromat to make it a PDF without having to spend money on a converter

Create webhook to initiate scenario
Google Slides -> Create
Google Drive -> Download file
In the download go to advanced settings.
Select Convert Google Slides to Format -> PDF
Now you can choose to upload it back to your drive, e-mail it or whatever.

That took way too long to figure out

Fabian_Weller

Well done David

School_Bus

thanks

Eloy_Paredes_He

@School_Bus it’s a great solution since doing a Google Doc template that looks exactly as that government file is really hard. I was trying to figure the way to do that too.

@Fabian great way of solving it too with Integromat.

Thank you both for sharing.

Fabian_Weller

In my opinion, Integromat is way better than IFTTT or Zapier.

You could add another task at the end to convert the Google Slide into a PDF file.

Marc_Dillon

Awesome trick @School_Bus. I think I’m gonna have to try this one out.

Simon_Krismer

you could easily make this a pdf by just using a simple trick in the URLby just changing the last part of the url (after the file ID) to /export?format=pdf
There’s lots of tricks like this with simple changes to the URL actually

Fabian_Weller

Thank you @Simon_Krismer for this trick.
I tried and it did not work. Found this helpful post that states: For Google Slides you have to use another text.

Share a direct download of a PDF version of your document
→ Google Docs & Sheets: Replace /edit with /export?format=pdf
→ Google Slides & Drawings: Replace /edit with /export/pdf

Simon_Krismer

thanks for the feedback @Fabian. I’ve used it mainly with docs, not slides, so its good to know that!

Ron_Mansolo

Really nice solution for forms. I have also used Jotforms in this situation. It creates forms directly from pdfs.

vivian

Sorry for bring up an old thread! I have learnt a lots from the content thanks so much for the contribution!

I would like to ask is it the only ways to have external tools Zapier or Integromat for putting the AppSheet data onto a file with standard format? Any new feature on AppSheet can solve the problem?

I am helping an non commercial/ non profit organization for setting up basic app feature & it’s way too complicated for them to maintain both the AppSheet & add-on later.

I think I will need to change to Jotform + Google Sheets & output as pdf if AppSheet is not workable.

School_Bus

I haven’t really researched if Appsheet could do it with the new features since putting this together. Sorry, hopefully someone else in the thread has a better answer.