Introducing Document Automator

Hi, it could be a very useful feature. Is there a restriction on the number of records or is there something I’ve done wrong? It shows only the first 100 records.
Also it’ be great if we had the capability to see the Sum, Average etc on each filed as we have it on the table.

The “find records” action has a limit of 100 records.

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.

Hi Scott, few years ago I was struggling to create nice looking documents with the Airtable N0-CODE solution templates (i.e Page Designer) and then, decided to take the LOW-CODE approach after reading this very interesting post with very rich and insightful comments inside the post from @Bill.French

https://community.airtable.com/t/automatic-document-creation-and-sharing-from-airtable-records/23130/10

The proposed approach is LOW-CODE (Google Apps Script) and provides (I think) the full flexibility and total control on any kind of document creation using any source of data (as long as we can get the data via an API call). You are decoupling the data collection from the data presentation way more clearly, and removing many dependencies.

The Level of effort to get it off the ground is a bit bigger (initial learning curve), however what you get in return is so much more in Flexibility (and total ownership). I followed @Bill.French advices in the post, and learnt the basics of Google Apps Script to generate document using Templates, and after that step … it allowed me to bridge that gap that I could not do with the built-in features of Airtable or any other third party services at the time (3 years ago).

For Airtable users that are not afraid to put a bit of CODE around their Airtable solution, I think looking into Google Apps Script might be a good time investment.

Hi Scott, few years ago I was struggling to create nice looking documents with the Airtable N0-CODE solution templates (i.e Page Designer) and then, decided to take the LOW-CODE approach after reading this very interesting post with very rich and insightful comments inside the post from @Bill.French

https://community.airtable.com/t/automatic-document-creation-and-sharing-from-airtable-records/23130/10

The proposed approach is LOW-CODE (Google Apps Script) and provides (I think) the full flexibility and total control on any kind of document creation using any source of data (as long as we can get the data via an API call). You are decoupling the data collection from the data presentation way more clearly, and removing many dependencies.

The Level of effort to get it off the ground is a bit bigger (initial learning curve), however what you get in return is so much more in Flexibility (and total ownership). I followed @Bill.French advices in the post, and learnt the basics of Google Apps Script to generate document using Templates, and after that step … it allowed me to bridge that gap that I could not do with the built-in features of Airtable or any other third party services at the time (3 years ago).

For Airtable users that are not afraid to put a bit of CODE around their Airtable solution, I think looking into Google Apps Script might be a good time investment.

:wave: Hi! I’m Ayesha, a Product Manager at Airtable. We have a quick update for you on this feature — now you can update an existing Google Doc within this automation.

When you set up your automation, you can now choose to “Update Google Doc”:

You can update the title or content of the document and format what you want to add.
Your content update can be inserted into the top or bottom of the document:

For teams who keep a running document, we hope this update will be useful for your work.
Let us know if you have any questions!

Thank you for this update! The ability to update an existing doc opens more possibilities. This will help with things like headers/footers and other static elements.

Is there a link to the help docs on how to specify the existing doc?

We’re working on getting our help documentation updated soon!

You can pick any existing document, after you connect your Google Docs account. When you click “+ Select from Google Drive”, you’ll see a window where you can browse your documents:

Hope this helps, let me know if you have other questions!

:wave: Hi! I’m Ayesha, a Product Manager at Airtable. We have a quick update for you on this feature — now you can update an existing Google Doc within this automation.

When you set up your automation, you can now choose to “Update Google Doc”:

You can update the title or content of the document and format what you want to add.
Your content update can be inserted into the top or bottom of the document:

For teams who keep a running document, we hope this update will be useful for your work.
Let us know if you have any questions!

We’re working on getting our help documentation updated soon!

You can pick any existing document, after you connect your Google Docs account. When you click “+ Select from Google Drive”, you’ll see a window where you can browse your documents:

Hope this helps, let me know if you have other questions!

Hey, this is great! Thanks for making the footer optional too. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

Question:
Whilst configuring the Airtable Automation, I noticed that we can update either the Title or the Content “Field” in Google Doc. Please excuse my ignorance (as I actually dropped out of Google Docs school when I discovered Airtable 6 years ago :grinning_face_with_sweat: ) , but how do we further define custom fields within the target Google Doc?

For example, I have half-a-dozen record fields that I’d like to send to fill in various words on the target google doc. Take a simple custom Title for example… how do we define the text in Google Doc so Airtable Automation picks it up as a field?

I see that one Action can cater for as many “Fields” as needed, excellent! Just hoping we can define our own custom fields in the target doc, then this may just be ready for production. :partying_face:

EDIT: Further to my earlier post - can Airtable somehow keep the Google Authentication open when grabing the document URL as a PDF to capture in an Airtable Attachment field, using the suffix /export?format=pdf as mentioned previously in this thread?

@ScottWorld mentioned that this trick works only for a document that’s saved in a publicly accessible folder. But to me, I’m thinking that as we’ve already authenticated Airtable to write to the file, we should be able to capture that updated URL as a PDF and save into our attachments without the need to publicly expose the doc.