Beyond data collection: Exploring the uses for online forms

Whether you're gathering customer information or managing internal processes, capturing accurate data is crucial for businesses of all sizes and industries. However, the real value lies in how you leverage that data to generate meaningful documents. Transitioning to a paperless office is a sustainable and efficient approach to document management. One effective step towards this goal is eliminating the need to print PDFs, and instead, storing them online. This blog post is about automatically transforming all the form data you've collected into polished and professional PDFs.

Let's consider Anna, who runs an event management company and needs to gather attendee registration information for an upcoming conference. In the past, Anna would spend hours sorting through piles of registration forms and manually sending out confirmation letters.

Now, all she does is create an interactive registration form that collects necessary attendee details, embeds it in her website, and promotes it on social media to reach her target audience. Attendees can access the registration form from the comfort of their own devices and when they submit it, Zoho Forms takes over, automatically generating personalized PDF confirmation letters and emailing them to each attendee. This saves Anna time, enabling her to focus on other important aspects of event planning.

What advantages does this automation offer? 

From contracts to invoices, having the ability to automatically generate customized documents with the data you collect can significantly streamline your workflow and enhance efficiency. Zoho Forms empowers you to create a wide range of documents to support your business operations.

Let's take a quick look at the reasons you should consider automating document generation.

• Save valuable time by eliminating the need for manual formatting and editing and focus on more important activities that drive your business forward.
• Manage larger volumes of documents without sacrificing quality.
• Ensure consistency and accuracy across documents by eliminating human errors and inconsistencies.
• Personalize and customize documents based on the data you collect. Whether you're tailoring invoices to specific customers or customizing proposals for different clients, you can create documents that are relevant and engaging.
• Make a positive impression on your customers by sharing visually appealing and well-structured documents that enhance the overall customer experience and strengthen your brand reputation.
• Allocate resources more efficiently and eliminate the need for additional staffing or outsourcing of document creation tasks.

All-new PDF Editor for Zoho Forms

We are excited to announce the launch of our all-new PDF editor in Zoho Forms! This PDF editor offers an intuitive interface with a wide range of advanced functionalities to help you design professional-looking documents.

Zoho Forms' variety of ready-to-use PDF templates cater to various business needs. Whether you're looking to create invoices, contracts, proposals, or any other document type, Zoho Forms has you covered. With our templates, you can generate PDFs in seconds.

The best part is that these templates are fully customizable, so you can tailor them to your brand and style. Add your company logo, choose the color scheme that aligns with your brand identity, and customize the layout and content to meet your exact needs. You can also customize text, add images, create tables, and include headers and footers. This level of customization ensures that your PDFs maintain a consistent and cohesive look, while giving you complete control over design and layout.

Simply select a template, make the necessary customizations, and generate the PDF with the click of a button. You can also create professional and dynamic PDF documents that reflect data submitted through your forms. To do this, simply add form fields to your PDF template that dynamically update with each form response.

This streamlined process saves you valuable time and eliminates the hassle of starting from scratch or manually designing each document. Further, you can automatically populate form responses in your PDFs, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.

Watch a quick video for an overview of the various features and functionalities our PDF editor offers.

Your PDFs are generated. Now, how do you share them? 
Zoho Forms offers convenient options for sharing generated PDFs with respondents after form submission. Choose to share through the Thank You page, email notifications, or as part of an approval workflow.

• Thank You page 
  After a respondent submits a form entry, redirect them to a customized Thank You page, where you can share a link to download a PDF copy of their submission. 

  

• Email Notifications
  Zoho Forms enables you to configure automatic email notifications to send respondents after they submit a form entry. You can attach the PDF to the email to ensure they can access their submission without having to navigate back to the form.

  
  

• Approval Processes
  If you have an approval workflow in place, Zoho Forms allows you to send automated approval/denial emails after the approval process is complete. You can include a PDF copy of the form submission as an attachment to the email. This ensures that both approved and denied applicants are provided with a copy of their submission in PDF format.
• Integrated Services
  You can choose to push Default Templates, Custom Templates, PDFs sent within form submission workflows, and PDFs sent within approval processes to your integrated services, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, and ServiceDesk Plus Cloud.
• Store PDFs in the cloud 
  If you've had the opportunity to explore Zoho Forms, you may have discovered that you can automatically save file attachments submitted through your forms directly to your preferred cloud storage platform, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, ensuring secure storage and easy access to the files.

Once you have configured Zoho Forms to save file attachments to a cloud service, you can choose to also store your custom templates and PDFs sent to respondents upon form submission. Thanks to this feature, you can keep a digital copy of the entire form response in PDF format, making it easy to store, share, and refer to the information as needed.

Try creating professional PDF documents today and let us know how it helps you streamline your workflows in the comments below. See you soon with another insightful post!