Document Designer

SmartSuite is committed to creating features that reduce the amount of work necessary to accomplish routine tasks. Creating documents is something that is an important part of many workflows, from producing quotes and estimates to generating proposals or invoices. The Document Designer helps you automate these tasks, allowing you to create document templates that are automatically filled with information from your SmartSuite records.

Document Designer allows you to to combine visual elements like lines, boxes and static text with fields from your SmartSuite records that place those data elements on the page.

Document Designer can be used to create, manage, and track sales and marketing proposals, contracts, quotes, and other important documents. You can use it to streamline your document workflow and eliminate manual processes, such as manual data entry, document approval, and PDF generation. With its drag-and-drop editor, you can easily create documents in minutes.

You can integrate Document Designer into your CRM, accounting, and other business workflows to automate your sales and document management processes.

Here are a few ideas to put all this power to work:

To create a document template, simply click on the Table dropdown arrow (for the Table you wish the template to be created in) and select "Document Designer."
​

Selecting + Create New will open up a new Document for you to create as a template.
​
​

Once you have created a new Template, you can add Elements and Fields to the document canvas. You can also click on the "New Document" text at the top to change the name of the Template.

Remember to click the Save Design button at the bottom to save your Template and its configuration!

The Document Designer includes a number of page elements that can be placed and arranged in your documents. They include:

Tip: When using Google Drive to host your image, you'll need to construct a different URL that removes the "wrapper" and only returns the final image.

For example if your google drive link is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yRg7T0kXjdoEkBDQEa-p5lQn96GbeWp0

then the image link you would want to use to remove the wrapper would be:

https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1yRg7T0kXjdoEkBDQEa-p5lQn96GbeWp0

You will also need to make sure that the image is shared as Viewer to Anyone with Link.

The position options to choose from are Absolute, Relative, or Anchored. Absolute will always keep elements in the exact position they are placed, but Relative and Anchored offer greater flexibility. Relative is our simplified version that will make the field move vertically down on the page relative to Absolute elements that are above it (allowing for Linked Records to expand, for example).

Anchored is similar but allows for much more control, as you are able to choose to anchor an element to always be below another element regardless of how its position changes. To do this you'll need to select Anchored and you'll then be able to choose what element to anchor to, and the distance in pixels that you would like it to be offset by.

In addition to page elements, Document Designer allows you to drop fields from the current Table onto the page canvas. Click the field name to add it to the designer canvas.

Once on the canvas, you can drag the field into the location you would like for it to display.

Two properties unique to the Files & Images field are the Display Mode and Fit Mode. Display mode lets you choose whether you'd like to show only the first image or if you want to show all images from the field. Fit mode's Fit option will scale the image to fit the boundaries horizontally, Fill will crop and zoom the image to fully fill the boundaries, and Stretch will stretch the image either horizontally or vertically to fill the boundaries.

The property unique to the Linked Record field is the ability to determine table column widths. The values designated are proportional to the total value to determine their sizing. For example, in the image below the Description field will take up 3/5 of the width of the table and the other two fields take up another 1/5 each.

When you click on a field that has been added to the document canvas, the following properties will display in the left panel:

Additionally, you can Duplicate or Delete the field with the buttons at the bottom. The dialog looks like this:

The settings option allows you to specify the size and orientation of the page you'll be generating with the document template.

You can set the following values:

Paper Size

Page Orientation

Once you have completed your template, it's time to generate a document! Open up a saved template. You will notice the following icons in the header bar:
​

These icons provide you with the ability to navigate through your Table's records, preview the document, and export or print the Template.

Once you have your template exactly the way you want it, you can now export a fully filled out PDF of the template from the record view! When you're inside a record you'll need to click on the 3 dot menu, hover over Export, then Adobe PDF, and you'll see the ability to export from a list of all templates within that table. Clicking one of the templates will automatically download it to your computer.
​

Scenario: The Marketing team needs professional proposals for campaigns.
​Solution: Use Document Designer to create a reusable proposal template that integrates campaign data.

Scenario: Accounting needs monthly invoice generation.
​Solution: Automate invoice creation using order records.

Scenario: A project manager requires weekly status updates.
​Solution: Generate reports directly from project records using a pre-designed template.

By leveraging SmartSuite's Document Designer, teams can improve efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance document workflows.