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Need to sort client form info into separate Google Docs

Hello, here goes with a Newbie question: I’m a relative beginner with Zapier and am the tech manager for my partner’s counseling/coaching business. I’ve developed a working Zap to report information from a Google Form into a Google Sheet, but need also to have the information go into separate client files in Google Docs. I’m not sure where to start with getting the information on how to do this -- I’m assuming I’d need to generate a doc for each new client from the identifier field and then append new information to it every time information is added. 

I’m certain this must be a fairly elementary task in Zapier, but can anyone point me in the direction of where to find the information on how to proceed? 

Thanks, and I’m grateful for this resource and this community. 

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7 replies

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @toneweaver 

Good question.

Can you outline a specific example so we can better understand the logic you are trying to apply with the inputs and expected outputs?

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
toneweaver

Thanks for the clarification, and I’ll try to remember to do that in future queries. 

 

Say we have two therapy clients, A and B, who each are filling out a weekly feedback form. I know how to get Zapier to send the contents of that form to become a new line in a tracking spreadsheet each time so the therapist (my partner) can have an overall view of client interactions. But I also want Zapier to send Client A’s responses to a “Client A” Google Doc and for each new form response from Client A to be appended to that document. I also want Client B’s responses to be sent to another, separate “Client B” document for Client B -- confidentiality is important in this field, and we don’t want clients seeing each other’s information by accident. 

I know how to append form responses to a spreadsheet, and I know how to append them to a Google Doc -- what I’m having trouble with is figuring out how to separate information from different clients into discrete docs and have that scale for more clients (C, D, E, ...). 

I hope this helps, and thanks for your patience. 

T

Troy Tessalone
Userlevel 7
Badge +14

@toneweaver 

You may want to use the concept of a lookup table:

 

⚡ Troy Tessalone - AutomationAce.com | Premier Certified Zapier Expert | #1 Zapier Community Contributor
toneweaver

Thanks, I’ll check that out. As I said, I’m a newbie, so any further guidance is highly appreciated. 

T

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @toneweaver, welcome to the Community! 👋
 

It sounds like you’re wanting to add the information from each Google Form submission into separate Google Docs file. And if the same client fills out the form again this new information needs to be added to their existing Google Doc file. Am I understanding that correctly? 

If yes, rather than using a lookup table, if you set the Google Docs files to have the client name as the document name then you can set up a Zap with the following trigger and actions:

  • Trigger: New Form Response (Google Forms) - runs whenever a client fills out the Google Form.
  • Action: Find a Document (Google Docs) - searches for an existing document using the client’s name that’s selected from the relevant field in the Google Forms trigger. Also has the option to create a new document if an existing one isn’t found.
  • Action: Only Continue If (Filter by Zapier) - uses the Boolean (True) filter rule to check the value in the _zap_search_was_found_status field true (meaning an existing document was found).
  • Action: Append Text to Document (Google Docs) - adds the information selected from the Google Forms trigger to the document found by the previous Google Docs action. Because of the filter that’s running, this action won’t run if a new document was created, it will only run for existing client documents that need new information added to them. To ensure it adds to the correct document, in the Document Name field you’ll want to use the custom value option and select the ID field from the Find a Document action.


As you mentioned you’re new you might want to take a look through the following guides that give more explanation of how to set up the different parts of this workflow:

 

Hope that helps to get you started. If I've misunderstood what you're looking to do or you run into any issues in setting this up just let us know. Always happy to help further! 🙂

toneweaver

This is great, thank you so much! I appreciate the detail, and will check this out. 

 

Thanks again!

T

christina.d
Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Keep us posted how this is goin for you - we’d love to know how it’s coming along! 🤗

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