Document builder: Map sheet columns to a fillable PDF

Applies to

Smartsheet
  • Business
  • Enterprise

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

This Help Article Appears in the Following Learning Tracks

Capabilities

Who can use this capability

The Owner and Admins can edit all mappings on the sheet, including mappings created by others. Owners, Editors, and Admins can create mappings and edit their own mappings. Viewers can see the mappings and build documents for download, but cannot attach documents to rows.

 

 

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Document builder generates documents using data from Smartsheet and a fillable PDF. Create the fillable PDF and then use the document builder to map column in Smartsheet to fields in the PDF. 

There are lots of ways to create a fillable PDF template. Here’s how to create a fillable PDF in Adobe  Acrobat, for example, but you can use any tool that works for you. 

To create a mapping and send out documents for signatures from DocuSign, see Create and Edit a DocuSign Mapping or Configuration.

Create a mapping

  1. Right-click any row containing data in your sheet to open the row menu, and select Generate Documents. The document builder opens. The columns in your sheet appear as fields on the left of the document builder.
     
  2. To upload your fillable PDF, select the PDF icon (or use the drag-and-drop PDF upload option). The PDF appears on the right of the document builder.
     
  3. Drag and drop sheet column titles on the left to the DocuSign fields on the right.
    Type into any fillable field to enter a static value. The entered value will appear in the field for all generated documents.
     
  4. When you’re done mapping your fields, name your mapping and select Save or Generate.

Now you can generate documents using your row data. You can download the documents to your device in a .zip file or attach each document to its associated row in the sheet. 

See Document Generation: Generate documents from row data for more information about generating documents with your mappings.

Tips for working with column mapping

  • To discard changes to your mapping, refresh the page or press the back button in your browser.
  • Make sure the fields on your template are empty. Any fillable fields or values in the PDF template will be overwritten with new values when you create your mapping. 
  • Smart remapping reuses existing document mappings. When you make a change to an existing document template and use the Document Generation feature to edit the mapping, it will recognize previously mapped fields; you only need to map new or changed fields.
  • By default, mappings are named after the file name of the fillable PDF used in the mapping. To change the name of a mapping, select the pencil icon to open the mapping editor, and type the desired name into the Output document name field at the top of the page. 
  • Create a filename column, when you create your mapping, use that column to name your documents. You can use formulas to generate custom filenames that, for example, combine a last name and an account number.