Does your team work with a standard set of documents, such as proposals and contracts, that you have to personalize each time? Does the thought of printing labels give you a head-ache? If so, read how easy it is to do now using Solve360 and Google Docs!
Once we complete a few initial one-time steps to get set, you’ll be able to merge a document by just simply loading a web address, choosing what you want merged, and hey presto! A ready-to-email PDF, document, etc. magically gets generated! So lets get the erm..hard stuff (read one-time initial steps) out of the way...
The One-time steps
1. Create a master document
First, lets create the master document in Google Docs. For a letter format that will merge data from a single Solve360 record (contact, company or project blog), you’d create the document as you normally would and simply insert the field label containing the data surrounded with square brackets, where you want data from Solve360 merged in. For example:
Labels that merge data from a set of Solve360 records are similar, but since we’re working with multiple records we’re going to create a table on a single page. In the first cell, layout the field labels in the order that you want. The system will automatically insert the data from each Solve360 record into a cell until the table is full, then it will repeat the table pattern on a new page.
Since some of the replaced fields may have varying amounts of data it’s important to set a fixed row height so that it is not determined by number of rows of data and will line up consistently with the printed labels.
2. Create a folder for Solve360 to work in
Create a new Google Drive folder named #Solve360 and put the master document you created in it. This is where Solve360 will look for your templates and save the new merged documents.
3. Install the Google Apps script
We will next save the Google Apps script in a Google Docs Spreadsheet. The spread-sheet's only use is to “host” the script - this provides us a special web-address to run it from.
Create New > Spreadsheet
Merging your first document
Open the bookmarked URL (from step 6 above) that starts the script > Choose the type of document, and the source of the data, the template to use, then click “Create document”.
If you are merging a single record you now have the option to email the document to your contact and save a copy in Solve360.
If you’re merging multiple records you’ll find the new document saved under #Solve360/Merged in your Google Drive.
