AutoDocument - Open-Source Mail Merge Alternative
Hi there, this post is introducing AutoDocument, a free and open-source document generating web app that connects spreadsheets, databases and user forms into documents such as Microsoft Word and PDFs. It's based on fantastic open sources libraries like python-docx-template and headless LibreOffice.
MailMerge is a pain because it:
- Only converts from Excel to Word
- Uses special field objects in the Word document
- Requires a Microsoft Office License
- Has limited templating options
AutoDocument is a free and easily installable web app that can setup reusable Workflows that convert data from a variety of sources including straight from databases and spreadsheets to several types of outputs, including Word and PDFs. It only uses text based fields such as {{ myfield }} instead of special objects. It can deal with logical blocks of text and loops to populate flexible templates including lists and tables.
Features
- Create (optional) user forms to kick off a workflow and link to your users
- Load and save data, templates and output from windows and linux network mounts, as well as S3 and SharePoint libraries.
- Powerful templating based on jinja2 and python-docx-template with logic blocks (like if, while etc) as well as standard field substitution.
- Chain sources together like forms, spreadsheets and SQL queries to create clever workflows
Easily installed by running the container: docker.io/tommalkin/autodocument:latest
Repo: https://github.com/TomMalkin/AutoDocument
Documentation: https://tommalkin.github.io/AutoDocument/
Landing Page: https://autodocument.app/
Container: https://hub.docker.com/r/tommalkin/autodocument
I'd appreciate it if you can try it out and give me some feedback!
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