I anticipate using Tadabase to build apps that, while they will be used online 95% of the time, will occasionally need to generate output, that is, formatted reports. For example,
An invoicing app will need to generate invoices. These may be many pages long.
A Contacts app will need to generate lists of contacts.
A to-do app will need to generate current to-dos.
Perfectly okay if these be generated as pdfs – but they need to be nicely formatted and capable of being printed. Any suggestions?
So the native pdf solution is a bit limited right now but it’s in the process of being overhauled. So we’ll have to be patient to see what that final feature looks like.
There are other 3rd party solutions if you’re interested.
i’ve read that there are multiple solutions being used by knack customers for document/report creation:
WebForm
PdfFiler
Carbone
Docupilot
Eledo
Google Docs
Which one/s would you recommend to use with Tadabase and what are the advantages of each method?
I’ve had great success with Integromat + Eledo and Integromat + Google docs.
Eledo is great for dynamically filling out existing forms.
Google docs is great for use with templating (ie. search and replace) and building HTML reports. I should mention though that Google docs is switching to canvas-based rendering rather than HTML so that process will be defunct soon.
Any of these processes are easy to setup, but maintenance can be cumbersome. You need to build in lots of error handling, which Integromat isn’t the best at.
The last option that I’d recommend is hanging on a little bit longer while we finish up adding both of the above as Tadabase features
Our goal is to offer features that enable you to dynamically fill an existing PDF form, as well as, build a customized PDF with rich content.
