Instant pdf genrating

[aminterfi]

Hello,
its my first question here, i want to know the best solution to have an instant pdf creation on appsheet.
i use bot for that and its take few seconds to finish it, I received some claims from my clients about that.

thank you so much

[Aurélien]

The method you're using, a bot with a "Create a new file" task, is the standard and recommended approach by AppSheet for generating PDF files.

Here are the best practices to handle this situation and enhance your clients' experience:

Make the Process Asynchronous for the User
Avoid making the user wait: The optimal solution is to prevent blocking the user interface during PDF generation. The bot operates in the background.

Indicate that the PDF is being created: You can include a column in your table (e.g., [PDFStatus]) that is initially empty or set to "In Progress..." when the generation process is triggered.

Display a link/button once the PDF is ready:

After the bot generates the PDF, it can update a column in your table with the file name or full path.

Create a virtual column (e.g., [PDFLink]) that constructs the complete URL of the PDF file.

Use an "Open a file" or "Display an external URL" action that utilizes this [PDFLink] column.

Make this action (or a button that triggers it) visible only when the PDF is ready (e.g., with a Show_If condition on the action: ISNOTBLANK([PDFLink]) or [PDFStatus]="Ready").

As suggested in community discussions, a button to view the PDF can appear once it's created, allowing the user to access it at any time.

Notification (Optional): If the user might leave the screen, consider a push notification to inform them that their PDF is ready, though this adds complexity.

Potentially Optimize the Bot Generation Process
While this won't make the process instantaneous, some optimizations can slightly reduce generation time:

Template simplicity: Simpler Google Docs or Word templates (fewer complex tables, fewer high-resolution images, fewer complex conditional sections with nested <<>> expressions) can be processed slightly faster.

Data volume: Ensure your template retrieves only the necessary data. <<>> expressions that filter large amounts of related data can slow down the process.

Expressions in the template: Verify that the expressions used in your template are as efficient as possible.

"Create a new file" task configuration:

File Folder Path and File Name Prefix: Use simple and direct expressions if possible.