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Re: NinjaForms, Zapier, Airtable

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Nate_Sheets
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi everyone,

I have been using Airtable for a while now. I am an independent behavior consultant who helps families of kids with challenging behaviors. I got airtable because I wanted something really customizable, and Airtable seemed like a good fit! I have enjoyed slowly learning and building upon what I know.

I am about to embark on a larger project. I write extensive documents, and my method is to have a large template where I first REMOVE all irrelevant data, and then work through filling in the blanks and making sure that everything fits the situation I am working on. This way of using a template has been great for my ADHD brain!

However, as I go through the document, I have to continually reference other parts of it. I am doing this in a Microsoft word document, which involves a lot of scrolling and, more importantly for my brain, distraction!

So, I want my final process to be:

  1. Parent fills out series of conditional forms via Ninja Forms on my Wordpress-hosted site

  2. That information is sent, via Zapier, into airtable

  3. Airtable’s formulas will help me summarize information into another airtable table.

  4. I will use an excel mail merge to reference certain data throughout the document in areas where I need to reference it, helping me to stay in the area I am at and immediately have the information at hand to write whatever it is I am writing. This will be awesome because airtable will allow me to quickly analyze data and likely save me several hours per document produced. This is important because Microsoft Word has an annoying limit of 200 datasets brought into a document via mail merge so Airtable will help me cheat that system by summarizing data efficiently.

Anyway, I just want to ask if this makes sense with the tools I am talking about here: Ninja Forms, Zapier, and Airtable. Does anyone anticipate any issues with this process? Obviously it will take a long time to set up, but I think the time it will save me and the easier it will make things are ultimately worth it.

2 Replies 2
Aron
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Hi Nate,

I’m not as familiar with Ninja Forms but everything you’re writing seems to make sense to me. One additional feature you may want to explore is Page Designer so you can create the documents directly in Airtable.

If you hit limitations of Page Designer (need multiple pages per record for instance), I’d check out the Formstack Block which lets you create formatted documents from Airtable.

Hope that helps!

Thanks, Aron. Yes, page designer has limited me to rage-inducing levels and I am annoyed Airtable hasn’t done anything about this yet given how many people have asked for it. Formstack is pretty expensive, though I may go there when I want to truly pre-generate the vast majority of the document instead of prompting me. Thank you!