Availability: Enterprise*
*This feature is available as a part of the paid PandaDoc CPQ add-on. If this is something you're interested in, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or sign up for a demo.
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Overview
PandaDoc Workflows are designed to automate and streamline your document creation process. By integrating data from your CRM or forms filled out by your team, you can generate customized, customer-specific proposals in just a few moments. Tailor these proposals based on contract terms or business segments effortlessly.
Features:
Pull data from CRM: seamlessly integrate with popular CRMs like HubSpot to automatically pull relevant data into your workflows.
Forms: easily create forms to gather necessary information from team members. This data can then be mapped and used in subsequent steps of the workflow.
Customizable workflows: design your workflows with as many steps as you need. You can adjust these workflows to fit specific business processes, ensuring they align perfectly with your goals.
Data mapping across steps: map data from one step to another with ease, ensuring that information flows correctly between forms, quotes, and documents.
Version control and collaboration: keep your workflows up-to-date by editing and evolving them as your business needs change. With clear roles and permissions, you can ensure the right team members have access to manage and collaborate on workflows.
No-code setup: set up and manage your workflows without needing any technical expertise. The intuitive interface is designed for business users, making it easy to get started and make adjustments as needed.
Example of a basic workflow:
Set up your workflow. Define where your data will come from (like your CRM or forms filled out by your teammates), set up your quote, and configure how this data will be used to create documents.
Publish the workflow. Make the workflow available for all users across your workspace to streamline proposal creation.
Execution. Users create proposals and complete deals using the published workflow.
How to create a workflow
Select ‘Workflows’ on the left navigation panel and select +Workflow to create a new workflow and open workflow builder.
You can add an unlimited number of steps of any type via the right side panel or by selecting +Add step button on canvas.
Step types:
Create form: add a questionnaire to gather the necessary data for use in subsequent steps.
Create document: generate a document from a selected template using the data collected in the workflow.
Create quote: insert a quote that will be included in the resulting document.
Pull data from integration: connect your CRM to import and use data from the integrated system.
Notes:
The workflow can include an unlimited number of steps of the same type. For example, to generate three documents, you would need to add three separate "Create document" steps.
Steps are executed sequentially, in the order they appear on the canvas. You can easily rearrange them by dragging the handle on the left to adjust the sequence as needed.
How to configure steps
Pull data from integration
This step allows you to connect your CRM to import and use data from the integrated system.
Note: Make sure to have your CRM connected in Settings > Integrations before you proceed.
To connect integration you would need to follow the steps:
Select Pull data from integration step > Select integration.
Select Connect on the integration tile you need and click Connect in the next modal window to connect your integration account (e.g., HubSpot).
Choose the entity type you want to retrieve from the integration. For HubSpot, the available option is 'Deal,' which is preselected by default.
Create form
Important: Users with a Creator or eSign license cannot run workflows. Change the user’s license type to ‘Standard’ to allow them to run workflows.
Forms allow you to collect all the necessary information from users running the workflows for use in subsequent steps.
Select Add step > Create form > Create new. By default, a multiple-choice field is added to the new form. You can easily change the field type by clicking on the selector in the top right corner, removing the field using the bin icon, or adding new fields by selecting +Add field under the existing field or the ‘+’ sign between fields.
Use the following field types to build your form:
Contact Preset: Collect a person’s data (e.g., email, first and last names, company) and assign it as a recipient in the document.
Short text: Single-line text collection.
Long text: Multi-line text collection.
Date
Email
Number
Phone number
Checkboxes: Multiple options can be selected.
Multiple-choice: A single option can be selected.
Dropdown
Image: Serves for form customization; cannot be passed to other steps.
Title: Serves for form customization; cannot be passed to other steps.
Field name: Each field has its Field ID which is used to map the field values from the form to variables or roles in further steps.
Tip: We suggest changing the default field name field_n to meaningful names to differentiate the fields from each other when mapping data between steps.
Tip: You can pre-select multiple field options by selecting the vertical ellipses menu on the right of the item > Make default selection.
Create quote
Quotes are a powerful tool within PandaDoc workflows, enabling you to present your products to customers with customized terms based on predefined quote rules. This allows for a clear, interactive, and dynamic proposal that adapts to specific conditions, ensuring your offers are tailored to meet the unique needs of each client.
How to configure a quote:
Select Create new.
You can either leave a quote empty (to later set up data mapping and populate it from the integration or catalog when running the workflow) or pre-set it with some default products, currency, design, etc. as needed.
Use quote data fields if you need to have some values passed to/from the quote step and manipulate them. Quote data fields allow you to set up quote rule conditions based on the value that will be pulled to the quote from the preceding steps or pass some data to the further workflow steps by manually adding value to them.
To edit, update, and populate the quote content based on input data from the previous steps you can configure the rules for the quote in the Rules tab.
Quote data fields
Quote data fields allow you to add custom quote variables:
to collect some data from the previous step
to pass some data from the quote to further steps in the workflow
to have some defaults within the quote
Quote variables will help you build the rules and perform some actions to quote depending on its values.
Rule builder
Note: Rules are executed in the order they are placed in the rule builder.
To get started, select +Rule and select +Add condition.
The Rule builder allows you to configure rules using a predefined set of properties and actions. These rules can be used to perform calculations or trigger various actions in a quote, such as adding a line item from the catalog, removing an item from the quote, or updating a value in a line item or quote section like a discount.
The rule builder offers two modes for creating and managing these rules:
Visual mode:: This mode allows you to configure rules easily using a graphical interface with a preselected set of properties and actions.
Code mode: For more complex scenarios, this mode lets you write rules from scratch in a JSON-like format, offering greater flexibility and control. You can find more details on the rule builder here.
Quote rules operate on a "when/then" logic. In the "When" section, you'll select one or more conditions that will trigger specific actions. The available text column operators include: "equal," "not equal," "empty," "not empty," "contains," "does not contain," "starts with," and "ends with." The available number column operators are: "equal," "not equal," "greater than," "less than," "greater than or equal to," "less than or equal to."
For example, quote rules can be based on quote variables, line items, or quote settings you have set up.
Note:
The ‘When’ part can contain multiple conditions. For the smoothest experience, we suggest adding no more than 15 conditions per rule.
Available entities for ‘When’ part:
Line items - name, price, quantity, SKU, Cost, Selected, pricing method, billing frequency
Section
Quote variable
Quote total
Quote settings - currency, other recipient options
Available actions for ‘Then’ part:
Add to
Update
Delete
Delete all line items in
Create document
This step is meant to create a document from the selected template using the data collected in the workflow.
Tip: Before you proceed, we recommend opening the template you intend to use within this workflow and setting up the approval workflow if it applies to your case.
How to configure the step:
Click Select template to open your template list.
Choose a template that will be used to create a document.
Notes:
Make sure that the contact information is mapped from either a CRM or a form to the final document. Note that within workflows, you won’t be able to assign recipients manually as you would outside of workflows.
To insert quote into document, you would need to have a Quote builder block in it
All the template settings will be applied to the created document.
Created documents are stored in the root folder of Documents.
How to set up data mapping between steps
Data tab
Each step has a 'Data' tab to manage incoming (Workflow data tab) and outgoing (Step data tab) data. Use the dropdown to map fields between steps, ensuring data types match (e.g., text to text). For instance, map the 'Contact' field from HubSpot to a 'Client' role in the 'Create document' step.
Workflow data
Data-in dropdowns contain the data items that can be taken from the previous steps of the workflow to populate:
from Create form step: various form field values - text, date, contact, etc
from Pull data from integration step: contact, contact group, text, number, date, etc.
Note: Go to HubSpot, then on the right, scroll down to the PandaDoc module. Select Actions > Show PandaDoc tokens and review the list of variables. If there is no value next to a variable, no data will be pulled to subsequent steps.from Create quote step: quote, quote data fields
from Create document step: document, contact, contact group, custom variable values, system variable values, etc.
Note: Step Pull data from integration cannot receive any data from previous steps.
Step data
The list of data items produced by step can be re-used in further steps.
Form fields
Roles or custom variables in a template
Quote line items or quote data fields in quote
Automatic field mapping
When the field names in your CRM or forms match the fields in PandaDoc, the system will automatically map them for you, reducing manual setup time.
Go to the Data tab of your step
Select Map data on the right
Select a step where from you'd like to populate fields
Check that fields from your CRM or form are matched correctly and select Map
Manual mapping
If the fields do not match, you can manually map them by selecting the corresponding fields.
Choose the right value from the 'Workflow Data' dropdown for the item you want to populate. For example, you can map the 'Contact' field from a HubSpot deal to a role (“Client”) name in the 'Create document' step. This will ensure that the role is automatically populated with the contact details gathered from the deal contacts.
Note: Make sure the data items you are mapping match their types, e.g. contact > contact, text > text, etc.
Mapping line items from integration to a quote
You can map the line items from the integration to quote line items.
To do this you would need 2 steps: Pull data from integration step and Create quote step.
Map the line items from integration to product lines of quote.
Select Setup.
Adjust line items’ fields mapping to quote columns if needed.
Add merge rules if needed.
Inserting a quote in a ‘Create document’ step
To include a quote generated within the workflow in your document, ensure that you add a quote builder block for each quote in the template used in the workflow.
Test running workflows
After adding all the steps, you can easily test the workflow before making it available to everyone on your team.
In your workflow, select the small arrow at the top right corner and select Run workflow from the dropdown menu.
Alternatively, you can test run a workflow you’ve created from the workflow list - simply hover over the workflow and select +Run workflow.
Publishing workflows
Publishing a workflow is the final step in the workflow creation process. It makes the workflow available for use by your team, ensuring that all members can access and execute the workflow as needed.
Before publishing:
Ensure all steps are configured correctly, including data sources, rules, and document templates.
Verify that all necessary integrations are connected and functioning properly.
Select the Publish button either in the workflow builder or from the workflow list. This will validate the configured workflow and publish the workflow in the workspace for the rest of the members.
Note: If any errors are found in the workflow configuration, they will be highlighted and need to be resolved before publishing.
Editing workflows
You can easily update the workflow when needed, ensuring it remains relevant and accurate as your business needs evolve.
To edit a published workflow, you’ll first need to unpublish it to prevent users from running it.
Unpublish the workflow by selecting Unpublish from the workflow list or within the workflow builder.
Modify or update the workflow as needed.
Republish the updated workflow to apply changes.