Create Mass Documents Using Form Publisher
Welcome !
In one of my previous blogs I had shown you how send bulk emails using YAMM. In that blog I had used FormPublisher to create custom bills for each that were then mailed to each of the residents. In this blog I will be showing you how I created those documents using Form Publisher.
What is Form Publisher ?
Form Publisher is a document generator that can be used to generate PDF’s, Google Docs, Slides and more. You can create customized documents with data from Google Sheets. To know more about Form Publisher click here.
Step1: Sample Google Sheet
The Google Sheet that I will be using in the blog contains the following details:
- Name of the resident
- Flat number of the resident
- Tower of the resident
- Email address of the resident
- Property Tax
- Repairing Fund
- Maintenance Charges
- Total bill
Step2: Install the Form Publisher Add-on
Before we get into creating the google doc template, we have to install the FormPublisher Add-on to our Google Sheet. To install the Add-on follow these steps:
- Click on Add-ons and click on get Add-ons.
2. The Google Workspace Marketplace will come upon clicking Get add-ons.
3. Search the Form Publisher Add-on and click on the first option and install the Add-on.
4. On clicking Install, accept all the requirements and the Add-on will get added to your Google Sheet.
Step3: Create the PDF Template
For the PDF template you can use Google Sheets, Google Slides or Google Docs. In this blog I will be using a Google doc as my template for the generating maintenance bills.
This is the template that I will be using for this blog. If you want to work with the Google Doc click here. We have to replace the variables in the Doc template with the data in the Google Sheet. To do that we need to specify the column name from which you want to replace data in the draft.
This is the format for the variable that you need to put in the Google Doc
Here I have done the following:
- Here I wanted to put in the name of the resident in the Bill To section, so I put the column name in the given format.
- The same is for all the variables that I have called in the Google Doc.
Note: Make you sure to use the same column name. For example, in the Bill To part I need to put in the name of the resident, so that's where I have put the column name like this <<name>>.
Step4: Create the Documents
Now that we have installed the Add-on, created the Template, its time to create the documents. To do that follow these steps:
- To start the Add-on, you need to go to the right side of your Google Sheet and click on Form Publisher.
2. On clicking Form Publisher, click on Start which will start the process.
3. Next you need to select the template for the Google Doc. If you have a template ready, just click on Select template and select the document that you created. If you don’t have a template, you can select a template that Form Publisher provides.
4. Here I have selected the document that we just created.
5. On specifying the Google Doc template you will see the following options.
- Firstly it has detected that we need to generate 10 files. If you want to see if everything is working fine, you can create a test file.
- Next you can either specify the destination folder or you can select the default folder that Form Publisher has created.
- Now you need to specify the name of the document that you want. If you want to change the name of the doc follow these steps:
- Click on Define file naming convention
- While naming the doc, you have to follow the same steps of creating the variable. Here I want the name of the resident and the flat number to be the name of the Google Doc.
- After making the necessary changes click on Save.
- The last settings is the most important, whether you want the files to be created as a Google or a PDF.
- To change the file format click on Select output file Formats.
- I am going to change the doc type to PDF.
- After making the necessary changes click on Save.
Now that we have added all the features and settings, you can do the following:
- Generate all the Files
- Generate a test file
For now lets go ahead and generate all the 10 files by clicking on Generate Files.
Step5: Check the Output
Here you can see on successful execution the docs have been created and the links for the same have come into the Google Sheet.
Here you can see additional columns have been created like Status, time and the PDF link.
Here you can see that all the details have come into the Google Doc.
Summary
In this blog we saw how to create bulk documents using Form Publisher. We started out by taking a look at Google sheet, installing the Form Publisher Add-on, creating the Template Document and in the end adding some settings and then create the files. I hope you have understood how to create bulk documents using Form Publisher. You can send your feedback to aryanirani123@gmail.com.
