From Google Form to PDF: Generate documents using Docdown and Zapier

Docdown is a workflow automation tool that helps automate document generation and electronically sign documents. It can integrate with almost any tools you already use with its Zapier integration.

In this guide, we are going to generate PDFs from Google Forms using Docdown by connecting them together with Zapier. By connecting your forms to Docdown with Zapier, you can perform a one-time setup for an automatic process that has a significant benefit: No more repetitive paperwork.

Integrating Google Forms and Docdown can be broken down into three major steps:

Setting up a document on Docdown & readying your Google Form.
Creating a Zap that retrieves and bridges the data from Google Forms to Docdown to automatically generate PDF documents.
Testing the Workflow with a sample document.

Setting up a document on Docdown & readying your Google Form

We are going to use a simple demo PDF form in this guide to fill out using data collected from a Google Form.

Preparing the document on Docdown

Step 1: On the Document page, click on New Document and upload your PDF file.

how to add document — Add a new document to Docdown

Step 2: After the document has finished processing, click on it to open the document editor. In the top left pane are multiple options for different fields you can add to your document.

Step 3: Add the different fields in your document that needs to be dynamically filled out.

all relevant data fields — Add data types from the top left pane, drag and resize data fields as required

Note: For data that needs to be distributed evenly in boxed columns, scroll down to the ‘Appearance’ section of the right sidebar and check the ‘Comb’ option.

how to align data — Check ‘Comb’ option to format numbers into the equally spaced boxes

Step 4: Save the document.

Step 5: Next, navigate to Workflow and click on the New Workflow button. For the trigger step, select the “Incoming Webhook” step.

setup workflow — Set up a new workflow from the workflow page

Step 6: In the ‘Document’ dropdown, select the document that was configured in the previous steps. To set the file name of the generated documents, you can add it into the “File Name” field. To use dynamic data from the form in the filename, click the plus sign on the right and select a field you want to use in the file name.

name the document — Name the document and customize each consecutive document name from the ‘File Name’ section

Optionally set up an email step

Step 1: In the workflow editor, click on the ‘+’ button on the left pane. Click on the Email step to add it to your workflow sequence.

add email to workflow — Add email integration to workflow

Step 2: In the From Email section, select the “notifications@docdown.io” address or select your preferred address if you have already added custom email addresses in Docdown.

Step 3: Fill in the destination email address and other fields. To ensure the generated document is added as an attachment, click on the “+” button in the right of the Attachment field and select {{1.generatedDocument}}. Add the email message as necessary.

add email details — Fill out email details and activate workflow from top right toggle

Step 4: Click on the Save button. Then finally click on the toggle button at the top right to activate the workflow.

Setting up the Google Form

We will now set up a Google Form to gather all the necessary from the end-user to fill out the document we configured before in Docdown. For demonstration, we are going to create a simple Demo form in Google Forms.

Step 1: To collect a date field, Google Forms has the inbuilt Date response option.

google form image — Select response options in the form that corresponds to the required data type

Step 2: For name, address, contact number & account number, we select the Short answer response option.

Step 3: For the checkboxes, we create three individual Checkbox fields each for Cash, Cheque & Credit.

checkbox add image — For the checkboxes, select Checkbox response and set response to ‘Yes’

Now that the form is ready, we can link the responses to Zapier, which will send the data to Docdown

Creating the Zap to link Google Form to Docdown

A Zap is a sequence of steps that connects different apps and shares data between them. In our case, the Zap is going to take the responses from the Google Form and send them to Docdown after new responses are collected.

Step 1: In your Zapier account, Make a new ‘Zap’.

zapier image — Create a new ‘Zap’ in your Zapier account

Step 2: To start off our workflow, we choose the first Trigger. This is the application from where we want to collect data. Search for Google Form & Select it.

how to add trigger — Search & select Google Form for Trigger

Step 3: In the Trigger event we specify when a Zap should run. For convenience, we are going to select New or Updated Response in Spreadsheet which ensures when there is a new or updated response, the Zap will run automatically.

when to run zap — Now, the Zap runs automatically every time a new or updated response is detected

Step 4: Select the Google account that has your form. To add a new account, you will have to log in to your Google account.

specify which documents are to be used — Specify where the data is to be extracted from

Step 5: Run a test trigger to confirm that everything is in order! You might have to fill out your Google Form at least once for this process.

Sending the responses to Docdown via Zapier

Step 1: Now, in the action part of the Zap, search and select Docdown. Select the action event “Execute Workflow”.

select docdown as action — Search for and select Docdown as the action

Step 2: If you haven’t added your Docdown account, click on add new account. An authentication popup will ask you to enter your Docdown API key. This key can be found on the Docdown settings page under the Account tab. Copy the API Key and paste it on the authentication popup to add your Docdown account.

api key image — First-time users might be asked for an API key, you can find it in your Docdown settings page

Step 3: Now we set up the action. Select the name of your Docdown Workflow, in this case, it’s named ‘Demo-workflow’.

set workflow name — Select your preferred workflow from the dropdown

Step 4: Now, we need to map the data that is recorded in the Google Form with the data fields in the Docdown document. For example, responses to ‘What is your name?’ in the Google Form are mapped to the ‘Name’ text field in the original document and so on.

datafield value — Set each data type to their corresponding questions

Step 5: To set up the checkbox options, click on one of the checkbox data fields, and in the dropdown, select ‘Custom’. Specify which checkbox value corresponds to each option as shown in the image below.

checkboxes — Set each checkbox option to custom value, eg. Cash for Checkbox Cash

Step 6: Click on the ‘Continue’ button. Zapier will run a test run by sending data from the Google Form to Docdown. After the test has run successfully, you can turn on the Zap.

turn on zap image — Turn on the Zap and the setup is complete!

Testing the connection between Docdown and Google Form

Now that the two applications are connected, we now need to submit a response in the Google Form. Zapier will run the Zap periodically and send the new responses to Docdown for generating the document automatically.

For this test run, we’re going to enter the following data in the Form.

Date: July-02-2021

Name: John Watson

Address: 221B, Baker Street

Contact no: 5555555

Account number: 7868990124

Transaction type: Credit

filling form image — We will now fill the form with test data. The data we input will auto-generate in our PDF once it’s submitted

Once the form is submitted, the automation we set up should kick in. The response is recorded by the Google Form, which is checked periodically by Zapier, and on new responses, it sends the data to Docdown. Docdown then generates the document with the data as shown below.

final pdf — Here is the PDF document that was automatically generated from the Google Form

document is ready — Docdown will generate the document and place it in the History tab

Conclusion

For businesses that rely on Google Forms to collect administrative data, this integration can save hundreds of hours in repetitive paperwork. Zapier can connect Docdown to more than 3000 applications from online forms to CRMs and ERPs.

If you are in the process of scaling the tedious process of paperwork and electronic signature for your business, we have some free legal contracts drawn up by our legal experts. We also have a guide on using API and webhooks that might prove useful. For more tips and tricks on automating your business, check out more articles in our blog!

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