Using a CRM like Solve can be an excellent way to track your clients, deals, and other business activities. All from a single interface, you can keep your entire organization on the same page and closing deals.
Add Formstack Documents to the picture and you can instantly populate all kinds of documents with data from Solve. From letters to contracts to quotes, you’ll never have to copy & paste data into a template again!
In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically populate an NDA when we add a tag to a contact in Solve and send it off to the client for signature using HelloSign.
To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our NDA using a Word document. Inside Word, we’re going to add our NDA details along with merge fields that look something like this: {$FirstName}, {$LastName}, {$Address}, etc. This tells the system where to place the data from Solve in the template.
Here’s what our NDA template looks like:
Since we’ll be collecting signatures via HelloSign, we need to add a signature tag to the document so that HelloSign knows where to place the signature on the document. This tag is just like any other text in our document and looks like: [sig|req|signer1]
Once we have our template ready, we need to upload it to Formstack Documents. From the Documents page in Formstack Documents, click the New Document button then enter a name. On the next step, choose Office Document as the document type then pick the file from your computer.
After you’ve uploaded your template, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can modify various settings like the type of file that is generated after the merge and the name of that file. For this example, we’re going to produce a PDF and include the name of our client in the PDF file name.
Next, we’re going to setup the delivery of our document so that it is automatically sent over to HelloSign for signature. Under the Deliver tab, click the New Delivery button and select HelloSign from the list. After you enter your HelloSign API Key, you’ll need to pick the merge fields for the signer’s email and name.
If you don’t have merge fields in your document for the email, you can choose <
Once you have saved your HelloSign delivery, we are done with the setup process inside Formstack Documents and we’re ready to integrate with Solve. To help with the integration, we’re going to use our friends over at Zapier.
Inside Zapier, we’re going to create a New Zap. For the Trigger, we’re going to choose Solve as the app, then New Tagged Contact as our trigger.
Once you authenticate your Solve account, Zapier is going to have you pick the tag that you want to look for. We’ve added “Send NDA” as a tag in Solve so we’re going to look for that.
Next, we’re going to setup the Action of our Zap. For the app, choose Formstack Documents then Create Document Merge as the action.
Once you authenticate your Formstack Documents account, Zapier is going to load a list of the documents in your account. Go ahead and pick the NDA template you just setup and Zapier will load a list of the merge fields in your document.
For each merge field, you need to pick the corresponding fields from Solve by clicking the button on the right side of each box. This tells Zapier how to send the data over to Formstack Documents so that it is populated in the correct spot on our NDA.
Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, go ahead and save your Zap and turn it on. We’re ready for a test! Login to Solve and add that tag to one of your test contacts. This will trigger Zapier to send the data over toFormstack Documents and your NDA will be sent over to HelloSign for signature.
Here’s what our NDA looked like in HelloSign ready to sign by the client:
Congrats, you’re all finished! You can now instantly populate all kinds of documents from Solve data. Can you think of any other ways you could use Formstack Documents to simplify your paperwork process?