Dynamic report/export (e.g. for pdf invoice)

[rokapp]

Hi,

Is there a way to make a dynamic report (e.g. invoice) for example in a 3. party service?

In Adalo I have a collection of Customers and another collection of Billing_hours. These two collections have a relationship, in which one customer from Customer collection can have multiple billing hours from the Billing_hours collection. For example Customer Alpa Ltd. has 13 billing hour records.

I want to make a report (e.g. invoice) by clicking a button in the app, in which all the billing hours records of the selected customer are listed (and even in the selected time frame). To create the pdf, sheet, etc. I naturally must use a 3. party service.

It seems that I can not use Zapier, since it works only with one data row at a time (not with the selected data set).

Is there a solution for this? Or even better, a public demo.

[Victor]

Hi @rokapp ,

As for me it’s possible to do this, though it is not trivial. I would use Countdown timer + Airtable + Integromat + Eledo for this. Did something similar already, worked for me.

Best regards, Victor.

[rokapp]

Hi @Victor ,

Sounds good! Could you explain more your solution or even share a demo? For example how/why you use the Countdown timer? I get the role of Eledo (to form the pdf) and Integromat (to transfer the data to Eledo). I tried to use earlier Zapier and PDFMonkey, but the problem was that Zapier delivers data per a new record to the collection, and thus a solution where multiple records from various collections are delivered didn’t work.

[ionutilie]

Hello, Victor @Victor.

1. The order of steps should be exactly like this?

@Victor

Countdown timer + Airtable + Integromat + Eledo

2. Can you recommend a tutorial?
3. There is no way to connect Adalo to Eledo directly, like using Custom Actions?
   Thank you!

[Victor]

Hi @ionutilie,

Reg. (1) & (2) - I see it like this. The main problem is that Adalo doesn’t have a filter on API queries, which means that you need to filter out the unneeded records in Intergomat… which takes the credits, and there is also a limit on the number of records returned. This is not a problem when you have 10 records, but when you have 1000 - this will quickly become one.

I haven’t made any tutorial for this, and to be honest, it took me quite a bit of time to find the working solution :))

As for (3) - sure, you can use Eledo directly. Their API is pretty simple, and have an option of providing you the link to PDF instead of giving the data directly. The question is what you are going to do with the resulting link to PDF file - I have no idea how long will they store it (and will they) :).

Best regards, Victor.

[ionutilie]

Thank you again @Victor !

I understand that Integromat may be complicated at this task but as it is possible to use directly Eledo, why not to keep it simple? Maybe is something that I don’t get it clear…

I have tested Eledo using Zapier and after two weeks the files are still related to the URLs. The only limit is that Zapier needs 2 minutes to execute the task…

I will give it a try using Custom Actions.

Best Regards,
Ionut

[Victor]

Hi @ionutilie,

This is what they state on their website:

I don’t know how to interpret this in terms of storing PDF links… and didn’t find any clarifications on the site. Just informing you

Best regards, Victor.

[ionutilie]

Thank you @Victor.
You are right. I didn’t pay enough attention, and yes the URLs are in relation with Zapier, not directly on Eledo’s server…

Regards!
Ionut

[kfall]

Hi Guys,

Thank you for this information. My question to you all is, if I want to export a filtered list of records that have several fields in a records, how do I get this into Eledo?

This is specifically what I am attempting to do…my webapp user is filtering a list of surveys by date interval, then they want to export this list by PDF or CSV.

Please help and explain how to do so in Adalo with custom action or otherwise. Thank you very much, K

[Victor]

Hi @kfall,

Quick research shows that it seems Eledo can accept a lists/arrays in the request. The problem is how to pass the unknown number of records (could be 1, could be 10) from Adalo to Eledo and fill in this list.
I guess this could be done via Integromat and possibly Airtable, but this requires some time for the research…

Best regards, Victor.

[Colin]

I made a tutorial for this along with an Integromat template: Create a PDF from a record in Adalo - Adalo Resources

[Victor]

Hi @Colin,

Great tutorial! Nice that Integromat can watch records, it solves a lot of issues reg. search.

Though as I understood the question from @kfall - it is needed to create a PDF out of several records in the list. Imagine a bill with several line items - could be 1, could be 5, could be 10…

I wonder how “watch records” could be used here - interesting thing to think about.

Best regards, Victor.

[kfall]

Thank you @Victor and @Colin for the brain time! Just to be extra clear, what we are trying to achieve is the creation of a PDF from a filtered list. This list can have one record or many. In fact we are trying to create a way to have a button at top of the filtered list that would allow a user to download/export a PDF/CSV of the filtered list to send to a third party. Thanks again guys. Any thoughts really help. Keep up the great work! K