Auto-populate fillable PDF on Plumsail Forms submission
In this article, you will learn how to automate the generation of documents in your company. For example, applications, orders, invoices, cards and others. We’ll show you how to automatically populate fillable PDF on Plumsail Forms submission using its integration with Processes.
Processes are a Plumsail Documents feature with an intuitive interface for creating documents from templates.
By means of Plumsail Forms, you can design elegant, responsive, and highly customizable forms for SharePoint Modern UI or any web page. In our example, we will collect data from a Web Form, apply it to a fillable PDF with the help of Processes.
Create a fillable PDF
Follow this instruction to create a fillable PDF. Download the template file for this article.
Create a Form
We have already designed an employment application form. Here it is:
To use the form you need:
Firstly, register an account on plumsail.com.
Open Forms and select Public Forms - Design a web form.
Import the downloaded JSON file, enter the form name and save.
To create your own form, follow this link to learn more about how to design Plumsail Web Forms.
Understanding Internal Names of Form’s fields
It’s crucial to understand the internal names of Form’s fields. They must correspond to fields’ names in a fillable PDF. You can set internal names for Form’s fields in its general properties:
Data from this field will fill in the corresponding field in our fillable PDF. Its internal name is FirstName.
SingleChoice fields in our Plumsail Form correspond to radio buttons in the fillable PDF. So, they should have not only the same general name but the same options.
Example: We have a SingleChoice in the Plumsail form with Yes and No options. Its internal name is CurrentlyWorking.
In fillable PDF we create two radio buttons. The general name is the same for two of them - CurrentlyWorking.
In the properties, we set a radio button choice - Yes for one and No for another radio button.
Configure the Process
When our fillable PDF and Plumsail Form are ready, we proceed to configure the Process. It will apply data from the form submission to the fillable PDF.
Create a new process
To create a new process, go to the Processes section in your Plumsail account.
For this example, we’ll use the prepared template.
During process creation, click Add Process and select Upload a document. Then select the downloaded template.
Enter a Process name and click Create.
If you prefer to create your own template, click Add Process and select Start from blank instead. Select PDF as the template type.
Preview the template
Once the process is created, you can preview the uploaded fillable PDF in the Editor. You can also upload a replacement template or download the current one.
Hint
To generate several documents from a single form submission, add multiple templates to your process. Learn more about set of documents.
Test template
To visualize the document before saving it, click the Test template.
A dialog will appear with an auto-generated form based on the tokens found in your template.
You can always customize this form if needed. Using a JSON file is also possible.
Note
This is for testing purposes. We’ll pass data from Plumsail web forms to the process. See the Start process section.
Switch the process to Production mode to remove Plumsail watermarks from resulting documents.
Template settings
Open the template settings to configure the output filename and PDF options:
Enter an Output filename for the generated file. You can insert values from your data using tokens.
Use Watermark to add a watermark if needed.
Protect the result PDF if you wish.
Note
Lock PDF form fields is enabled by default. Disable it if you want the fields in the generated PDF to remain editable.
Delivery
The next step is delivery. For demonstration purposes, let us set up Gmail delivery.
Follow the Gmail delivery guide to connect your Gmail account before configuring the recipient settings.
Fill in the recipient’s email address. Add recipients for a copy or blind copy if needed. Define the subject of the letter. And write an email body.
You can use tokens from your template to specify details in the email subject as we did, or in the body. The submitted data will be applied to them as well. Find out more about using tokens.
You can configure as many deliveries as you need. Check the available delivery options.
Start the Process on Plumsail Forms submission
We will start our Process by submitting the Plumsail Web Form.
For that, we will bind it. Press the Bind button and select the form from the dropdown.
Once we’ve done it, the Form will appear in the list of Plumsail Forms bound to this Process.
Every time somebody submits the form, the Process for populating fillable PDF documents will start. It will apply the Form submission data to the fillable PDF and send the result document by email.
See how the result file looks:
Sign up for Plumsail Documents
To fully automate the generation and flow of your documents, register a Plumsail account. It’s easy to get started and save time with the help of Plumsail Documents.