How to combine multiple PDF documents

If your team handles a lot of documents, or if you've been using the PDF: Create from Template steptype across multiple flows, there's a good chance that you'd like to consolidate them together for legal reasons or just easier handling.

But combining PDFs manually can require expensive software and be time-consuming. Luckily, we have the PDF: Combine Multiple steptype to take care of it for you. 

Title

The title appears up top in Sidekick when your team reaches this step in the flow. We recommend something like "Merging documents..." but it can be whatever you want.

Automatically run when step launched?

Check this box to automatically merge the documents specified in this steptype when your team reaches this step in the flow. 

Automatically complete when PDF available?

Check this box to automatically advance to the next step as soon as the combined PDF is available.

(Optional) Create a variable for the document ID

If you want to refer to this document later on in the flow, like adding it to a record field or hyperlink in a public reply, you can use this field to create a custom variable. 

You can name this whatever you like, but we recommend keeping it concise. To refer to this newly combined document as a variable you'll need to wrap the name you give it with variable headers.

For example, if you want to give the combined document a variable name of...

invoice

... you'll need to wrap the variable with a pdfID prefix and brackets so it appears as...

<%- pdfId_invoice %>

For the rest of the flow session, any time you reference <%= pdfId_invoice %>, the combined document you created in this steptype will be rendered.

Enter Values

Use this table to select the PDF documents you wish to combine.

• Order
  • Use this field to set the order in which the PDFs should be combined.
• Field Name
  • Use this field to choose which method you will use to pull in each document
    • PDF ID can use the same type of variables demonstrated in the code blocks above.
    • PDF URL can be a direct link to the necessary document.
• Label
  • Use this field to give each document a shorthand name. This name will appear next to each PDF field in Sidekick.
• Value
  • Use this field to provide the variable or URL for each document you wish to combine.