Multi-subPDF Generation to Create Merged PDF

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Hi All –

Hoping for a little guidance on a Workflow challenge I’m running into…

My app handles equipment inspections, and each main inspection record has, say, 10 related equipment inspections (linked through a Relation via the Row ID). Each equipment inspection already generates its own PDF report through DocsAutomator, which gets saved back into Glide as a file URL — that part is already built and works great.

What I’d love to do now is set up a workflow that:

  1. Loops through all related equipment inspection rows for a given inspection

  2. Runs the existing DocsAutomator PDF creation for each one

  3. Merges those individual PDFs together (probably through some merge service via Zapier)

  4. Saves the final, combined PDF back into the parent inspection record in Glide

Basically, I’m trying to get to the point where one button click creates a single, merged inspection report that includes all the related equipment inspections. Understood that it will likely take some time to execute, but that is fine.

The Relation between the inspection and equipment inspection tables is already set up via Row IDs — I just need help figuring out how to make the loop and merge workflow come together.

Looping workflows baffle me so much — it’s the one thing in Glide I just can’t really crack.

Has anyone tackled something similar or have ideas for the best way to structure it? Really appreciate any pointers or examples!

Tagging @Rupert as it may apply to other batch use cases! And @ThinhDinh because you mentioned to let you know if I needed any help with looping :P… thanks in advance!

Thanks so much,
Mike

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My thinking is having all your “related equipment inspection” PDFs in a comma-delimited string, then pass them through to PDF.co API for a merger.

Once you’re done, you can upload the file somewhere and bring the URL back to Glide. Or use base64, but I don’t know how large the base64 approach can handle.