Use Power Automate

Start a process and generate documents from a template

Processes are an easy way to automate the creation of documents from templates. You just configure template, test it and specify how to deliver results (email, OneDrive, etc.).

You can use Plumsail Documents connector for Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) to start a process.

Start by creating a Plumsail account and selecting a data center location. This is where your data will be stored and processed according to the Data Processing Agreement.

Proceed with creating an API key. You will need it in your Flow.

Then add the Start document generation process action to your Flow. You will be asked for a Connection Name and an Api Key. You can type any name for the connection. For example, Plumsail Documents. Then paste the API key that you created earlier to the API Key field.

The action automatically adds inputs to the Power Automate interface for entering values based on your template tokens from the process.

For example. if we have these tokens inside a DOCX template.

The action automatically adds fields to the Power Automate interface. An example of the flow is shown below. As you can see, these four content fields inside the action window represent four tokens from the above template.

Optionally, once the action is executed, you can retrieve the resulting document as an output of the action and continue working with it in your Flow. In this case, the resulting file is saved to a SharePoint folder. Alternatively, you can choose any other connector to save the file or send it via email.

The above example of flow has a manual trigger for simplicity, but you can trigger your flow on various events. For example, for a selected item in the SharePoint list, or When a new item is created in the SharePoint list, or various Web forms submissions - actually, there are too many cases to list them. Use different triggers to populate document templates with data from your web-services.

Please, find out examples of Power Automate Flows with processes:

• Create documents from a template and electronically sign using Adobe Sign

• Create documents from a template and electronically sign using signNow

• Create custom documents from Dynamics 365 CRM

• Create Word and PDF documents from Microsoft Forms

• Create Word and PDF documents from Cognito Forms

• Create Word and PDF documents from Typeform

• Create Word and PDF documents from JotForm

• Create Word and PDF documents from Gravity Forms

• Create Excel and PDF documents from Plumsail Forms

• Create Excel and PDF documents from Microsoft Forms

• Create Excel and PDF documents from Cognito Forms

• Create Excel and PDF documents from Typeform

• Create Excel and PDF documents from JotForm

• Read CSV and batch generate PDF documents

Trigger flow when a process finished

Sometimes you need to do some actions when a process of document generation is finished.

You can use “Process finished trigger”. The trigger returns an URL of the generated document. You can use the output from the ‘Process finished’ trigger further in the Flow or you can download the content of the generated document by URL using an HTTP action — GET method.

Advanced document processing

Sometimes, you don’t want to use Processes to generate documents or documents are already generated by a third-party system.

In this case, use the rich set of Power Automate actions from Plumsail Documents connector.

For example, you can:

• Convert documents to various formats

• Extract data from fillable PDF forms

• Protect PDF files and add watermarks

• Split and Merge PDF documents

• Parse documents using regular expressions

• Read CSV files

List of actions

The list of actions in the Plumsail Documents connector for Power Automate (Microsoft Flow):