PDF Pages
Transcript Summary
Introduction
Hey everybody, Today we're shining a spotlight on PDF Pages 2.0. We've recently done a massive overhaul to the PDF page generation system inside of a Tadabase application, and I'm super excited to show you all the new capabilities. In this video, we’re going to dive deeper into this feature.
New Features in PDF Pages 2.0
The first major update is that PDF Pages have moved from being tied to a specific page within the page builder to their own central location in the automation section of the builder. This allows for easier access and management of PDF pages from anywhere within the builder.
PDF Pages and Layouts
To start, there are two main tabs in PDF Pages: Pages and Layouts.
- Layouts contain all the general page information for the PDFs you want to generate. You can create multiple layouts with custom settings, such as themes, paper size, orientation, and margins.
- You can also add a background color or image and customize headers and footers with company logos, page numbers, and more.
Creating a New PDF Page
To create a new PDF page:
- Click the Add New PDF Page button.
- You can give your PDF page a name, description, and choose between a list or detail PDF.
- A list PDF displays all records from a given table.
- A detail PDF shows information about a specific record and any connected or related records.
Generating PDF Previews
From the list of PDF pages you've created, you can click the Download Preview button to get a snapshot of what the PDF will look like before generating it in your app.
- For detail PDFs, Tadabase will generate the preview using the first record in the dataset to show connected records and provide a full preview.
Using PDFs Inside Your Tadabase Application
You can generate and access PDFs from within your Tadabase app in various ways.
Adding a PDF Print Button
You can still add a PDF Print Button to pages from the components menu. This button triggers the generation of a PDF when users visit a detail page, allowing them to download or print the PDF.
PDF Access Without Visiting Detail Pages
To streamline access, PDFs can now be generated directly from a parent-level page.
- For example, by editing a table component and adding a connected PDF link, users can generate and download PDFs without having to visit a specific detail page.
Example: Real Estate PDF Generation
In this example, I’m using a property management app where I’m a real estate agent. Whenever I add a new lead, I want to send a PDF to my broker.
- Inside the form component, under the notifications tab, I can create a new email and choose to generate and attach a PDF on the fly when the form is submitted.
Generating PDFs with Scheduled Tasks
You can also generate PDFs using scheduled tasks.
- For example, you can set up a task to check for open projects every day at 9:00 AM, generate a PDF for each open project, and send it to your team.
- The new Create PDF option in the task action dropdown allows you to choose the PDF, where to save it (e.g., an attachment field in a table), and whether to append or override existing attachments.
After running the task, Tadabase will process the records, generate the PDFs, and save them back to the project records. You can also set up another scheduled task to email these PDFs as attachments at a later time.
Conclusion
As you can see, we've completely overhauled the PDF Pages system inside Tadabase. We're so excited to share this with you and can't wait to see what you create. Thanks so much for watching, and take care!
We'd love to hear your feedback.