PDF Templates

A PDF template is a PDF form you upload, such as an IRS W-9, a state form, or a lien form your team fills in by hand today. You connect the form’s boxes to your process’s fields. The Field: Create and Save PDF automated action then fills the form from each process and saves the PDF in a file attachment field.

Use a Merge Document when you design the document yourself in ProcessPlan. Use a PDF template when the document has to be a form someone else made, exactly as they made it.

What You Need

• The PDF form, up to 25 MB and 200 pages. A fillable PDF keeps its own boxes. A flat PDF, such as a scanned form, works too: you draw the boxes where the values go.

• Permission to edit the process the template belongs to. A PDF template always belongs to one process, because its boxes are filled from that process’s fields.

Upload a PDF Form

1. Open Administration > Documents > PDF Templates and click the New PDF Template icon (top right)

2. Choose the Process That Fills It

3. Click Choose a PDF, pick the file, and check the PDF Template Name

4. Click Upload and Open

ProcessPlan reads the form and opens it in the editor, with a note about anything the upload changed.

Note

Scripts inside a form are removed when it is uploaded. Boxes keep the number, date and phone formats the scripts held, but totals and checks the form worked out by itself no longer run.

Tip

To connect a box before you upload, type a single field token into it in Adobe Acrobat, and nothing else. That box arrives already connected to the field.

Connect Boxes to Process Fields

The editor shows every page of the form, with each box outlined:

• Green - filled from a field

• Orange, dashed - a suggested match

• Red - needs attention before the template can be used

• Gray - left as is

Click a box to open it on the right, then choose the Process Field That Fills This Box. Only fields that can fill that kind of box are offered:

• Text boxes take most fields that read as text, such as text, numbers, dates, emails, a chosen option or a person’s name. Passwords, signatures, files and tables are never offered.

• Checkboxes take a checklist field with exactly one option. The box is ticked when that option is chosen.

• Radio buttons, dropdowns and lists take a dropdown or radio button field. The chosen option is matched to the form’s own choices, and the box shows a warning naming any option the form doesn’t offer. A box whose field holds one of those isn’t filled.

A field hidden from some people by its hide formula, such as a bank account number only your HR group sees, is never offered for any box. Everyone who can open the saved PDF would see its value. If a connected field gets such a formula later, the template can’t be used until you change that box.

A connected box shows the field’s value as part of the page, not as a box someone can type over. When the field is empty, the box is empty too. A box you leave as is keeps what the form has, and people can still fill it in later in their PDF reader. You don’t have to connect every box: a 100-box government form can connect just the boxes your process knows.

Other ways to connect boxes:

• Use This Field accepts a suggestion. ProcessPlan suggests a field only when exactly one field’s name matches the box’s name, ignoring capitals, spaces and punctuation. Nothing is connected until you accept it. Accept All Suggestions accepts every suggestion at once.

• Create a Process Field for This Box adds a field to the process, named after the box, and connects it. A checkbox gets a checklist field with one option, and a radio group or dropdown gets a dropdown field with the form’s choices.

• Leave As Is Instead removes a box’s connection.

The Boxes tab lists every box. Tick several to Accept Suggestions, Create Process Fields or Leave As Is for all of them at once.

Draw Boxes

Click Draw a Text Box or Draw a Checkbox, then drag across the page where the value should go. A click without dragging draws a box of the usual size. The new box opens on the right so you can choose its field.

Drag a drawn box to move it, or drag its corner to resize it. To remove one, open it and click Remove This Box twice. A box the form came with can’t be removed: leave it as is instead.

Preview the Filled Form

1. Click Preview

2. Choose the Record to Fill It From, then click Make the Preview

3. Click Open the Preview

The preview is filled the way the automated action fills it, with “Preview, not signed” across the top of every page. Nothing is saved to the process. The link works for ten minutes. Under it, ProcessPlan lists any box it couldn’t fill as asked, for example a value too long for its box.

Mark the Template Ready

The automated action only uses a template marked Ready. Click Mark as Ready once no box needs attention. If a connected field is deleted later, or changed so it can no longer fill its box, the action stops using the template and the editor lists the box to fix.

Fill the Form Automatically

Add a Field: Create and Save PDF automated action, choose the template in Or a PDF Template, and choose the Save PDF in Attachment Field. The setting appears once the process has a PDF template.

When the action runs, the form is filled from that process right away and saved in the field, replacing what the field held. The Instance Audit Log records PDF Created From Template, with a note for any box that couldn’t be filled as asked. If the PDF can’t be made, for example because the template isn’t marked Ready, it records PDF Not Created From Template with the reason.

When you copy a process within your account, its PDF templates are copied too, connected to the copy’s fields. Copying a process to another account leaves its PDF templates behind.