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How to Create PDF files from Google Form Response

With Email Notifications for Google Forms you can instantly create a document using another google document as template. The add-on empowers you to generate document and share them with multiple recipients using google's document sharing options.

After you install and launch the add-on, it's time to generate your first document.

Watch the embedded video below to follow and create your first pixel perfect document from a form answer.

Read on to understand more on how this works.

Concepts​

What are workflows anyway?​

Workflows are a set of activities that need to be executed in a predefined sequence to complete a process. For example, generating a pixel-perfect invoice or PDF, sending an email, or transferring data to another system when someone submits a form.

How to Create a Workflow​

After installing the add-on, click on "Setup Workflows" to launch your Workflow window. From there, you can create a workflow by clicking on "Create Workflow."

Activities in Workflows​

Currently, only one activity (Export Activity) can be created per workflow. This activity helps generate pixel-perfect PDFs, including invoices, newsletters, or any professional PDFs.

How does Export Activity work?​

  1. Define Template: Google Docs is a very powerful tool that is used as invoices , news letters , business documents , certificates or any other professional documents. You can use the same as a Template and generate highly personalized professional loking pixel perfect business documents that can include answers to google form submits.

Template is a Google Document. The final Document or PDF generated will look exactly same as the template . The template can have static information that will never change . The template can also have dynamic or variable information that will change based on the specific form answers. The dynamic information is controlled via expressions. Please watch the getting started video to understand how dynamic data can be used through expressions.

Define a template in a Google Doc where any dynamic parameters can be replaced through expressions supported by Form Notify.

note

Avoid special characters like curly braces {} in your form Question .Having them may not work if you use them in expression since expression itself is defined using them.

  1. Create Output Folder: Determine the folder where you want to create the PDFs when someone submits a form and create it accordingly. It's best to separate the template and output folders under a single parent folder.

  2. Design your Activity:

    • Select Template and Output Folder: Choose the template and output folder.
    • Subfolder: Optionally, create a subfolder per form using expressions like {{Form Name}}.
    • File Name: Define the name of the generated PDF using expressions. Make files unique with {{Form Name}}-{{Response Id}} or similar.
    • Sharing Options: Configure file sharing options.

Once configured, the workflow will execute automatically each time a form response comes in.

How to test a Workflow​

Test the workflow execution from the "Replay Past responses" menu. Replay a response and verify that it generates the required PDF file in the configured output folder with the given sharing options.

Pausing Workflow​

Pause a workflow from the workflow main page. You can also delete a workflow.

Tracking Generated Documents​

If the form has a Google Sheet for responses, the same sheet will be updated with a document link against each response.