Start using Airtable

Watch the introductory video or learn the basic and advanced features outlined in the following documentation.

Introduction

It’s quite easy to start using the Plumsail Documents extension for Airtable:

  1. Set up a document generation process.

  2. Connect the Plumsail extension to your Airtable workspace.

  3. Once everything is set up, select the base records you want to generate documents for and use the Plumsail extension to generate documents automatically.

Airtable extension intro

That’s it! We’ll review each of the steps in more detail further in the article.

Set up a document generation process

For demonstration purposes, we are using the Airtable Client orders database available in the Product catalog template.

We also created an Invoice template that matches this Airtable database. It already is complete with tokens, or special placeholders, from the database. For a deeper understanding of how to create and use your own template for Airtable, you can refer to our guide on how to create a document template for Airtable from scratch.

To use the Airtable template start with creating a process from template:

Airtable create process from template

Then search for the Airtable template:

Airtable create process from template

Name the process and proceed to the settings:

Airtable create process from template

In the process settings we also choose PDF as the output for the result file.

Airtable process PDF output

Let’s explore how to use the Airtable extension.

How to add a button and choose a process to run

First, connect the Plumsail Documents extension.

  1. Open your Airtable database and click Add an extension button.

Airtable add an extension button
  1. Type Plumsail in the search field and click Add button when the extension is found.

Airtable add an extension

3. Then Sign up for Plumsail Account if you don’t have an account already and click Connect. You’ll need to enter your Plumsail account email and the password to complete the connection.

Airtable add an extension
  1. After connecting to the Plumsail account you’ll see a dialog with details to add a document generation button. Let’s check the settings:

Airtable add an extension
  • Process to start. Dropdown menu with all available processes from the account. Select the process you want to use to generate the document.

  • Button title. The button title is pre-filled with the name of the selected process, but you can change it.

  • Multiple records. When you select multiple records, you can either generate a document for each record or generate one aggregated document with all records.

  • Result document. This is how you receive the result document. You have two options: download the document and/or attach it to the record. Additionally, select a field to attach the document.

  • Field to store attachment. Select a field from the database to store the generated document.

Note

Please check out the article on how to add an attachment field to your Airtable database.

You can add several buttons to the same database and link them to different processes. All Airtable users who have access to the database will see the added buttons.

  1. If you click Add button and close the settings, you’ll see that a button is added to the extension window.

Airtable add an extension

How to copy tokens and add them into the template

Let’s go back to our document generation process to add tokens from Airtable to the document template.

We created a process using the Invoice template based on the Airtable Product catalog template. Feel free to add or remove tokens from the template to align with your database fields. For example, we can explore how to use tokens to display images from the database on the generated document. For guidance on creating and utilizing your own document template, please refer to our step-by-step guide.

  1. Open your Documents settings.

Documents process settings

And open the template for editing.

Documents process settings
  1. Then go to the Airtable database and click on the gear button to open the extension settings.

Airtable tokens
  1. Open the list of the tokens by clicking on the Show template tokens button.

Airtable tokens
  1. You’ll see all available tokens from the database. Copy the token you want to display in the generated document.

Airtable tokens

Let’s now take a look at how to change the Airtable Invoice template to display additional information from the database.

Go back to the documents template and add the tokens you want to display.

For example, we want to add pictures to the Product column cell:

Product column
  1. Go to the extension settings, select the database Client orders and click on the Show template tokens button as described above.

  2. Find the image URL token using the path: Order line items -> Image -> Value -> thumbnails -> small -> url.

Airtable copy image URL token
  1. Paste the copied token to the Product column cell.

Airtable paste image URL token
  1. Add the picture formatter to dynamically insert pictures into the DOCX template.

Airtable add picture formatter

Hint

Use the markdown formatter to paste “Rich text” Airtable fields content into documents.

Run process from Airtable extension

Now, we can close the extension settings and generate an invoice.

Airtable select records

The resulting document is downloaded and attached to the record.

Airtable invoice result

Run process from Airtable Interface

It’s also possible to trigger the same Documents process from an Airtable interface with the help of Airtable automations.

Please review the article on How to create document from template using Interfaces and Automations in Airtable.

It shows a detailed walkthrough of adding a button to an Airtable interface and integrating the button with your Documents process.

Airtable Automation

Hint

You can use a custom token name to access data in your field, rather than using the autogenerated one. Check out this article to learn how to do it.