This is a paid bot, and its usage will be counted toward your plan's credits limit. For more information about credit usage, refer to this article.
General
Use the Pre-fill dropdowns from Google Sheets bot to retrieve data from Google Sheets and automatically pre-fill dropdowns in your documents.
Use case: You’re a travel agent collecting customer applications containing fields with dropdown choices. Using the Pre-fill dropdowns from Google Sheets bot, you can save time and automatically transfer your custom dropdown options stored in Google Sheets to documents.
How to set up
The Pre-fill dropdowns from Google Sheets bot activates several times during one filling session when:
- A recipient switches between documents
- A recipient starts the signing process
- A recipient fills out a specific field in a document (requires additional condition settings).
Adding the bot in the step:
1. From the Bots tab:
Switch to the Bots tab and select Add bot to step.
2. From the step menu:
Click on the three dots on the step and select Add bot to step.
3. Search and install:
Use the search bar or categories to find the bot quickly.
Select the bot and click Install bot.
Connection settings
1. In the Connection settings section, click Connect to link the bot to your Google account.
2. Select the Google account you need to connect. Alternatively, connect a new account by clicking Add connection.
3. You’ll be redirected to the page where you have to select the Google account you want to connect. Ensure you give all necessary permissions to interact with your Google Drive content.
Once connected, proceed to the next section.
Action settings
1. In the Link and pre-fill data section, select the source to pre-fill from.
Select your drive.
Click Select file to find the needed spreadsheet.
Browse for the spreadsheet using the search bar. Click Select to confirm your choice. This can be a standalone spreadsheet or one located inside the folder.
After choosing a spreadsheet, select a needed sheet.
2. Choose if you want to replace existing text in the document dropdowns by ticking the Replace text in dropdown options box.
If you choose not to replace the text, the dropdown will contain both pre-filled and default values, as shown in the screenshot below. If you choose to replace the text, the dropdown will only contain options pre-filled from the spreadsheet.
Next, proceed to the mapping. Mapping allows the bot to retrieve the correct information from your spreadsheet and put it into your document or web form. Before starting, select the Document or Web form tab to work with.
Document:
Use the Document tab to pre-fill dropdowns with matching column values. For example, you have a list of countries and respective world zones, and you want a recipient to see a list of countries depending on the zone they enter.
Connect Google Sheets values to document fields. Select the sheet from the dropdown (1) and the document (2) you want to pre-fill.
Select columns you want to map:
1) Click Add column
2) Tick the columns you want to map
3)Click Select to confirm your choice.
Select a dropdown field from the document. Use the automatic mapping option in the box to map multiple fields quickly. Click Yes to agree or No to continue manual mapping.
To map more columns, click Add column. To map columns with the different documents, click Add another document and repeat the process.
Set a lookup to tell the bot which row to retrieve. In our case, the Direction column must match the World zone field.
As a result, the bot pre-filled all values from the world zone indicated by the recipient.
Note: If you skip the lookup section, the bot will retrieve all values from the mapped column.
Web form:
In the Web form tab, you can:
Set the pre-fill similar to the Document tab but only for web forms.
Use different values for showing to the recipients and for operating inside your system.
Let’s consider the second case. For example, you want recipients to choose a country, and based on their choice, you need to export the respective airport code to another spreadsheet.
Follow the steps below:
1) Select the dropdown to pre-fill
2) In the upper dropdown, select the column values you want recipients to choose from (Country).
3) In the lower dropdown, select the column values you want to operate internally.
For our case, we’ve installed the Export to Google Sheets bot, which will export the values from the Airport code column to a different sheet based on the country a recipient selects. For example, the recipient has selected China, so the bot has retrieved the Beijing airport code.
Conditions
Configure the bot execution conditions based on simple “if-this-then-that” rules. For example, you can set conditions based on document field information, recipient data, date of document signing, document data, and decline reason. Learn more about bot conditions usage in the dedicated article.
Advanced settings
In this section, you can set additional bot configurations:
Determine how often the bot will run
Decide what to do with a revision if the bot fails
Add tags to your document to easily locate it
Learn more about adjusting Advanced settings in this article.