Context
To provide some context, here’s a quick recap on how the GM Templated DOCX plugin works:
- Create the docx template you will use for your merged documents, with a range of ‘direct replace’ merge tags and ‘conditional content’ merge tags that correspond with the fields in your form.
- Upload your template to GravityMerge (i.e., to your website via an upload area in the admin interface), and then connect the template to the form.
- Sort your confirmations, and your document automation tool is complete.
When someone fills in your form, they can download or email the automated document as a docx file.
Question
Today a customer asked whether the plugin enables each built docx file to be automatically emailed to the site admin.
Answer = yes, well kind of
The short answer is no, as the plugin’s email option is something that appears to the user once the document has been built (if the site admin has used a shortcode in the confirmation page that makes that option available), thereby enabling the person who has built the document to email it to anyone if they wish. However, the longer answer is “yes, well kind of…”. Let’s take a look.
Within each form’s settings, there are options for GravityMerge. One of those options is to save document builds (you can choose to have them saved or automatically deleted). If you’ve selected the save option, the document builds are accessible to the site administrator in the Forms > GF Saves area.
What a site admin can do is set up a notification email to themself (using standard Gravity Forms functionality) so that they’re informed when a new document is built with the form. That standard notification could contain a link to the site’s GF Saves URL (i.e., the area in the backend where built documents are accessible if the site admin selected the save option in the form settings). Then, when a notification email comes in, the site admin can simply click on the link to that GF saves area, and download the document from the saved documents area by clicking on the latest document build. And voila!