How to Create a Bot That Fills In a PDF Form And Emails It To The User

In this tutorial, we show you how to create a bot that takes answers to questions through a bot and uses these answers to populate a PDF form or convert the answers into a PDF document. This can then be emailed to the user and copied in to another source e.g. HR.

For this tutorial, we use The Bot Platform, Make(formerly Integromat) and a platform called Eledo. Eledo has a free to use level, which allows you to create 100 form submissions. After that, the pricing increases but the top level package is just €69 for 1800 submissions per month.

Step 1 Set up your PDF template in eledo.

For this example, we have set up a simple PDF template document that takes in the user’s name and a field called variable.

Step 2: Set up your bot in The Bot Platform

In our example bot, we have ask for the user’s message (which will populate the variable field) and we use the email address quick reply to capture their email. The final message in our flow contains the webhook.

Step 3: The Make(formerly Integromat) Scenario

The Make(formerly Integromat) scenario captures the variable pulled through from the webhook, generates a PDF through eledo, emails that PDF to the user and HR and finally returns a message through the bot to say it has been sent to them. Our complete scenario looks as shown below:

First set up a new webhook and paste the webhook generated into the last message in The Bot Platform. Now run your scenario and run your bot, answering all of the questions. It will now pull through your variables into Make(formerly Integromat).

Next you want to add the elledo module to your scenario. Select generate PDF from the options. Set up a connection with Elledo and paste in the API key (generated in the settings tab in elledo). Now you should be able to select the elledo PDF template you created in step 1.

Once you have selected this, you should see the dynamic fields you added into the template have been pulled through. We have used the firstname and lastname fields pulled through from the webhook and the message we asked the user to type in. When set up, it should look as follows:

Now we want to add in our email step. Select an email module in Make(formerly Integromat). Connect Make(formerly Integromat) to your email provider.

In the to field, you want to use the email variable pulled through via your webhook. The subject can be anything you want, as can the content. You then want to add an attachment and select the elledo generate PDF step as your source. Finally, if you want the PDF content to be copied into another person or department, you can include another email in the copy to field under advanced settings.

Finally, you want to add in a webhook response, confirming that the file has been emailed to the user.

Turn your scenario on and run through it and you should see an email come through with your PDF document attached.