How to create documents from a template in Power Automate and sign them using SignNow¶

In this article, we will show you how to create documents from a template using Processes and sign them with the help of SignNow.

Processes are a Plumsail Documents feature with an intuitive interface for creating documents from templates.

SignNow is an electronic signature cloud-based software, which allows to sign and manage documents on any device.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you can register a free signNow trial account.

We’ll connect these tools in Power Automate (Flow) to automize the documents exchange and signing.

Configure the Process
Create a Flow

Configure the Process ¶

Before creating the Flow, we need to set a Process, which will create a PDF purchase agreement from a DOCX template.

Create a new process ¶

Go to the Processes section in your Plumsail account.

Click on the Add process button.

Set the Process name. As we’re going to create a PDF purchase agreement from a DOCX template, select DOCX for the template type.

Configure a template ¶

Once you’re done with the first step Create Process, press the Next button, and you’ll jump to the next step – Configure Template.

There you’ll find two substeps:

Editor;
and Settings.

In Editor, you can work out the template online, or upload the pre-made template and modify it in case of need.

You can download a DOCX template for a purchase agreement that we have already prepared.

And then upload it to the process.

Templating syntax¶

When creating your own templates, mind the templating language. Plumsail Word DOCX templates use a different approach than most other templating solutions. It uses a minimal amount of syntax to make your work done.

In short, the templating engine thinks that everything between {{curly}} brackets is variables where it will apply your specified data. Read this article to get familiar with the templating engine.

Test template¶

After you’ve uploaded the template to the process, you will see the template preview. To get a sight of the resulting document, click the Test template button. You will see the dialog where you can insert your data in JSON format to test the template. This JSON data represents what the templating engine should paste into {{brackets}} instead of object names and their properties. So, it must correspond to tokens from the template.

To test the contract template from our example, copy and paste the JSON data presented below.

Note

This is JSON for testing. You can pass data from an external system or web form to the process. See the Start process section.

JSON data¶

{
    "Number": "432",
    "executionDate": "2020-05-25",
    "deliveryDate": "2020-05-30",
    "buyerName": "LUCKY LLC",
    "buyerAddress": "55 Main St.New York NY 97203 USA",
    "companyEmail": "[email protected]",
    "companyAddress": "3 Main St.New York NY 97203 USA",
    "companyPhone": "202-555-0131",
    "companyName": "Plumsail LLC",
    "products": [
          {
            "name": "Monitor",
            "price": 99,
            "quantity": 10,
            "cost": 990
          },
          {
            "name": "Fridge",
            "price": 4219.99,
            "quantity": 1,
            "cost": 4219.99
          }
    ],
    "total": 5209.99
}

Once you’ve tested the template, press Save&Next to proceed further - to the Settings substep.

Fill in the name of the result file.
Select PDF format for the output file
Protect the result PDF if you wish

Delivery ¶

The next step is delivery. For demonstrating purpose, we’ll store the result file in OneDrive. But there are other options.

Select the folder where the ready document will be saved.

You can configure as many deliveries as you need.

Start the Process ¶

We will start our Process from Power Automate (Microsoft Flow).

Create a Flow ¶

This is how our Flow looks:

Create an agreement and sign with SignNow flow

Check out the Flow steps described below.

Flow trigger ¶

After you’ve opened My Flows, create a new one, and select a trigger. You can pick any, for example, trigger a Flow when an opportunity in CRM is closed, or a new item is added to SharePoint list, or some others. We will pick ‘Manually trigger a Flow’ just for demonstration purposes.

Start document generation process ¶

This is the action from Plumsail Documents connector. This action is suitable for starting the Process of generating documents from a template. You can find more information about this action by visiting this page.

Mind, If you use the Plumsail documents action for the first time, you’ll be asked for ‘Connection Name’ and ‘Access Key’. You can type any name for the connection. For example, ‘Plumsail Documents’.

Then create an API key in your Plumsail Account page, copy and paste it to the ‘Access Key’ field.

The Start document generation process action has two parameters:

Process name. Select the process you need from available ones.
Template data. Specify source data in JSON format as we did on the step of testing the template.

Upload document ¶

This action is from the SignNow connector for Power Automate. It will upload the agreement to the SignNow account. After that, we can send the document for signature. In the ‘File’ field put Result file – Dynamic content output of the ‘Start document generation process’ step.

Invite to sign ¶

The last action is from the SignNow connector too. It sends the contract for signing. Just type in an e-mail address of a recipient and select Document ID in Dynamic content.

Once the agreement has been signed, you will receive a notification e-mail with the signed document attached.

Hint

If you use an Adobe Sign system for e-signs or just want to compare SignNow with an alternative variant, read our article How to create a document from a template and sign it using Adobe Sign.