Introducing Document Automator

Yeah, I’m confused about why Airtable didn’t invest more money into improving Page Designer, instead of rolling out another document creator that, in many ways, is more lacking than Page Designer?

Page Designer needs:

1. Multipage support (for multiple records and/or linked records).
2. Headers & footers.
3. Ability to automatically generate PDF files.
4. Ability to be automated via Airtable’s Automations.

Yeah, I’m confused about why Airtable didn’t invest more money into improving Page Designer, instead of rolling out another document creator that, in many ways, is more lacking than Page Designer?

Page Designer needs:

1. Multipage support (for multiple records and/or linked records).
2. Headers & footers.
3. Ability to automatically generate PDF files.
4. Ability to be automated via Airtable’s Automations.

Yeah, I’m confused about why Airtable didn’t invest more money into improving Page Designer, instead of rolling out another document creator that, in many ways, is more lacking than Page Designer?

Page Designer needs:

1. Multipage support (for multiple records and/or linked records).
2. Headers & footers.
3. Ability to automatically generate PDF files.
4. Ability to be automated via Airtable’s Automations.

Without the ability to sort record lists/grids in automations, I’m not really able to use this feature.

For example: I want to produce a check-in list for front desk staff to sign in event attendees. I can query for RSVPs by event, but unless I can also sort that list by last name, it’s effectively useless.

The hidden feature here that I learned from @openside and @Kamille_Parks is that after a document is generated, you can automatically generate a PDF of that document and then insert it into an Airtable attachment field.

You just need to add /export?format=pdf after the URL.

Note: This feature requires that your document be generated in a publicly-accessible folder.

Here’s a screenshot that @Kamille_Parks provided for me:

I wonder why is this feature hidden?

Can only second what @ScottWorld and others have said here: Instead of coming up with a new way to create Google Docs, it would have been very good to improve Page Designer (esp. include automations).

I’ve been creating Google Docs out of Airtable (with the help of Zapier) for years and won’t stop using that solution with this new release by Airtable.

Hi David,

It is possible to achieve what you describe by taking the following steps:

1. Create a view containing the data you want, sorted the way you want
2. In automations, add a “Find records” action based on the view you created in step 1
3. In automations, add a “Create doc” action (using doc automator), and reference the data from step 2.
4. The data in the document should reflect the sort order of your view

Hope that helps!

Yeah, the best thing about using Zapier (or Make.com or On2Air: Actions) to create Google Docs is that you can base those documents on complex document templates that contain formatting, headers & footers, fonts, colors, tables, margins, etc.

Even better, all of those tools can ALSO create complex spreadsheets with Google Sheets based on a complex spreadsheet template as well.

DocuMint also creates documents based on a template, but it uses its own template editor that doesn’t require Google Docs.

So personally, I’m having some difficulty understanding why people would choose Airtable’s Document Automator over any of these other options.

It still seems to me like improving Page Designer would’ve been the path to go down, since Page Designer has already started taking its very first baby steps down the path of creating these sorts of complex documents.

Good points - (I have used Documint and am now using on2Air Actions)

But an advantage that Airtable’s new Document Automator has over both of those products is that it can easily create a document based on a view. With Documint / on2Air - you have to start with a single record (which then receives the PDF) and work with linked records.

So I will be using both products.

This looks quite useful but a couple of thoughts I have…

• My requirements air more on presentations rather than docs and therefore being able to have a monthly stakeholder pack in Google Slides which could be mostly automatically generated would remove one stress from my life. As I understanding it, this is only the equivalent of an MS Word file (not super familiar with Google Apps).
• Also, I find that I am more likely to want to share elements from the Interface dashboard rather than the detail level. It would be great to have a simple, automated way of automatically dropping charts and other more visual elements from my interfaces into slides in preparation for that stakeholder review.

This looks quite useful but a couple of thoughts I have…

• My requirements air more on presentations rather than docs and therefore being able to have a monthly stakeholder pack in Google Slides which could be mostly automatically generated would remove one stress from my life. As I understanding it, this is only the equivalent of an MS Word file (not super familiar with Google Apps).
• Also, I find that I am more likely to want to share elements from the Interface dashboard rather than the detail level. It would be great to have a simple, automated way of automatically dropping charts and other more visual elements from my interfaces into slides in preparation for that stakeholder review.

Hey Stephen,

As Scott mentioned, our On2Air Actions app uses Google Docs, Google Slides, or Google Sheets and has several additional features that are not available in the new Google Docs automation.

Our app also has a way where you can use charts from Sheets and add them in Slides.

Feel free to start a free account and try it out.

We’re glad to give you a demo and help you get set up as well

Highly recommend On2Air actions for this. I had a Demo from Dan a couple of months ago and am amazed at how cool it is and what it can do

Yep. Agreed. What we really need is a vastly improved Page Designer. It’s what all of us have been hoping for!

This is perfect except it doesn’t work with Shared Drives. For most Google Business Workspace users, we generate these docs within our own team/corporate shared drives. Currently when saving to shared drives it shows error. We really need this to work with shared drives please for the corporate environment please!

Hi all

Really finding this a useful feature.

@Scott_White Is there anyway Of including the summary values in the report? (Ie Sum / count of the records in the group)

I use it to generate a snapshot of a budget every week so would like to see totals.

Thanks

Andrew

Thanks Rob

Good idea. I guess I could - though as I’m looking for a total of a group - it wouldn’t make much sense appearing in a column.

But will give it a go. Thank you.