exporting filemaker data into a pdf form

[coolhandbr]

Our company is going paperless.  Our Bill of Lading is a pdf form that we use on our tablets.  My problem is taking the data from filemaker and inserting the data into the pdf form. ANY SUGGESTIONS?

 

[Davesmind]

In my experience, I had tremendous success building the layouts within Filemaker and then saving the result as a PDF. I have had issues where I needed to use government documents and needed to fill them in, but they were very complex and recreating them would not work. The best results, in that case, was scanning the actual document into the layout and then filling out the document by orientating the text fields throughout the document. I think the problem I see is that your trying to tie the data to a particular PDF. What happens if you have a large amount of specific PDF's? Do you change both Filemaker and the PDF  when changes are required to the document or keep all of the layouts within Filemaker?  

[coolhandbr]

Thanks for your response! The main use of the form capabilities (dropdowns, bubbles, etc.) is for filling out additional data on these same forms outside of the office and outside of filemaker. Our forms are generated at the office and then sent to agents in the field, who then need to add additional information from their mobile devices. We could hand type all the information into the PDFs, but its much quicker and easier to use the form field data presets.

[Davesmind]

I know this is probably a cost issues, but why not just input the information into a Filemaker layout on the tablets (FM-GO, Instant Web Publisher, PHP simple interface)? You could have all of the information you require, have an area for any new information and with a click of a button have a pdf generated document either locally or by email depending on the application and needs. 

 

It seems you want to fill out header information for a PDF and then have the agent fill out the data on site to complete the form. To me it sounds like information/data entry will be duplicated down the line as that data needs to get back to the system in some form. Why not put the data entry at the forefront and once they enter everything (FM on the tablet), they not only have a complete form, but also have performed the data entry for you. I would think this would be a better direction for a paperless process. Keeping all of the data on the database end makes it much easier to work with it in any direction you choose to pursue, but once it leaves the system it will require even more steps to get it back.