How to automatically generate contracts from Airtable data in Zapier¶

Prepare Word contract template¶

For demonstration purposes, we use a simple general service agreement template. You can download it by this link.

Do not forget to adjust the sample agreement to your unique circumstances and needs when using the document officially.

This is how our template first page looks:

You may see tokens in {{ }} brackets. We highlighted them in green. Airtable data will replace them.

So, the templating engine thinks that everything in {{ }} is variables where it will apply your custom data.

With Plumsail Word DOCX templates, it’s easy to build rich templates with lists, tables, charts, and other graphics. To learn more, check out how Word DOCX templates work.

Create new process¶

We’ve prepared our template and proceeding to create a document generation process.

Go to the Processes section in your Plumsail account.

Click on the Add process button.

Set the recognizable process name. Select DOCX for the template type.

Configure template¶

Once you’ve created the process, you’ll jump to its first step – Configure Template.

It includes two substeps:

• Editor;

• Settings.

In Editor, you can compose the template from scratch or upload a pre-made one. It’s also possible to modify the uploaded template online.

As we have already prepared the template, upload it to the process:

To see how the resulting service agreement will look, click on the Test template You will see the dialog where you can fill in the auto-generated testing form. Form fields are created based on tokens from your document template. You can adjust the look of the testing form by changing token types.

Click Save & Next to go to the Settings. Here you’ll see the following parameters:

Template mode

It is Testing by default. It means you won’t be charged for this process runs, but result documents will have a Plumsail watermark. Change it to Active to remove the watermark.

Output filename

Use tokens to make it personalized. They work the same way as in the template. For instance, we use the following tokens to define the output file name - {{customer}}. As a result, we’ll receive an agreement with the name - Service Agreement/Bear Paw Solutions.

Output type

By default, it is the same as your template’s format. In this particular case, it’s DOCX. We’re changing it to PDF to generate PDF contracts from the Word template.

Test template Once you’ve customized all the settings, you can test the template to see the result as we did it before.

When everything is done here, click on Save & Next to set up deliveries.

Delivery¶

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

You need to connect to your OneDrive from the Plumsail account. After that, set the folder’s name where to save the completed document.

You can configure as many deliveries as you need.

Start process¶

We will start our Process from Zapier.

New record in View in Airtable¶

We need to start the process of generating contracts only for opportunities with status Closed-won. That’s why we set a trigger New record in View.

Once you’ve chosen the trigger, you’ll be offered to connect to your Airtable account with Zapier.

After that, you’ll proceed to select a Base, a Table, and a View to monitor. In our case, it’s Closed-won.

The last thing to do with the trigger - Find data. Press Test trigger to find data. It will allow you to use the trigger output in the next step.

Start process in Plumsail Documents¶

Once the trigger is set, search for Plumsail Documents and add an action Start process.

Click Continue. If this is your first Zap, at this point, you’ll need to Sign in to your Plumsail Account from Zapier to establish a connection between the app and your Zapier account. If you already have a Plumsail account tied to the app, you can add another one at this step, and use it instead.

Customize Start Process¶

Choose the process you want to start by this Zap from the dropdown. You will see fields to complete - they have the same names as tokens from the template.

To complete them, use the output from the Airtable trigger.

That’s it! Our Zap is ready🎉 See how the resulting file looks: