How AirOps Consulting Automatically Generates Documents using Airtable and On2Air to Save 3-4 Hours Every Week

by | Documents, On2Air Actions

About

AirOps Consulting is a full-service Airtable consulting company helping entrepreneurs, enterprises, and non-profit organizations streamline their operations and build their future on low-code/no-code platforms.

Industry

  • Consulting Agency
  • Concert and Event Production Company

Product

We no longer offer the On2Air Actions or On2Air Docs product mentioned in this article as we focus on our Airtable automated backups product, On2Air Backups.

We’ve partnered with 2 great alternatives – Documint and DocsAutomator, document creation platforms that integrate directly with Airtable, to use as your primary Airtable documents service.

On2Air Actions

The Google Docs Function in the On2Air Actions app allows you to automatically create a Google Docs file using data from your Airtable record. It will generate a PDF file and a Docs URL and add it back into your Airtable base.

“With the Google Docs function in On2Air, we were able to create documents from our Airtable data with tables and images that generated beautifully.”

-Cherry Yang, Founder and CEO of AirOps Consulting

Challenge

With more and more clients who needed automated documents using data stored in Airtable, Cherry and her team knew they needed a document solution that integrated directly with Airtable.

“I went through a few iterations trying to find the best way to generate documents using Airtable data,” said Cherry Yang, Founder and CEO of AirOps Consulting. “We tried the Page Designer app in Airtable for single-page documents, but it wasn’t intuitive.”

It was when Cherry had a client who needed multi-page documents with tables and images that the limitations of Page Designer and other software products truly became apparent. 

“We also tried Zapier, but it lacked dedicated multi-page and table features for what we needed. And it was so slow,” said Cherry.

Use-Case

AirOps Consulting was setting up an Airtable system for an event and concert production company. The production company stored the information about their events in Airtable. It included data such as equipment, like stage lights and sound systems, equipment pricing, personnel, event dates, and more. 

For each event, they needed to generate a list of all the equipment they needed to bring from their warehouse to the event site, along with an image and description of the product.

They also needed to create quotes to give to potential customers for event management. They needed to include information about the event, such as the date, set up times, and venue.

Client Needs

  • Use data stored in Airtable
  • Automated document from template
  • PDF version uploaded back into Airtable base
  • Google Doc URL added to Airtable base
  • List of equipment items
  • Multi-page document
  • Images in document
  • Tables in document

Solution

The team at AirOps Consulting was able to use the Google Docs Function in the On2Air Actions app to quickly generate the equipment list for each production. 

They set up a template in Google Docs with the company letterhead and created a layout for quote information, equipment information, equipment images, and personnel info for each event.

Quote template

Now, each time the company needs an event quote or equipment list, they click a checkbox in their Airtable base and a few seconds later, they have a Google Doc link and a PDF file automatically created and uploaded back into the Airtable base. 

quote-Blue-final-googledocs

Get this Quote Template for Google Docs!

Results

  • Automated multi-page documents using data from Airtable
  • Seamless integration with Airtable and Google Docs
  • Generated PDFs that were directly added back to an Airtable attachment field
  • Google Docs URL of the original document stored inside Airtable field 
  • Save an average of 3-4 hours a week

Get this Project Budget and Quotes Airtable Base Template!