Document Designer SUCKS... and how to make it better thread
J
Jeremy Wells
If you've used SS's document designer and have ever used anything else adobe products, figma, canva, hell even powerpoint or word... you'll resonate. It's such an incredible opportunity within SS to have documents related to record fields but guys. It feels like it was abandoned in 2005.
• UNDO. We need a way to undo a change. CMD+Z, CTL+Z would be a nice start
• DUPLICATE & MOVE DOCUMENT. This is a big one. Say I spend 400 hours designing a doc and then need a version of it in a similar table. Well I
can
make a duplicate but I can't
move it outside that table. Ok, no problem you say, just clone the table - great except that document designer templates don't clone with it.• ADD IMAGES. without having to link to a URL seems like that would make a lot of sense.
• DYNAMIC RESIZING. I know this is a big one but if the fields and deign were truly locked to the field then they would resize accordingly but now we sort of have to anticipate the max and min entry size or restrict characters.
What else?
S
Sheldon Garnett
Scripting Widget is your answer.
J
Jeff Eusebio
@Jeremy, agreed, it's good enough for internal use but I don't look forward to using it! Here's a feedback request I made in 2023 which was folded into a "Completed" request... although my feedback was not completed. Renewing it here:
Feedback on Beta Document Designer
Jeff Eusebio
Overall, feels like an early build. Glad to have it though! Functional, but rough. Feedback:
1. Allow drag and drop of fields from the left-hand side to exactly where I want them on the sheet.
2. When dragging a variable field, automatically add the field title to the left of the field name. It's easier for me to delete that then add that manually every time, and I think most people would want their fields labeled most of the time.
3. In conjunction with a above, if I could select all fields, drag all to the document, have them all labeled automatically, then move them around, that would save me a ton of time.
4. Then, use an AI to lay out the page in an attractive manner. 😊
5. Allow me to more easily select and change attributes of fields in a group. Currently if I lasso select multiple fields, I can’t change any of their properties.
6. When using shapes, allow bring to front or send to back.
7. Let me click on a label and change the text right there rather than having to change the text in the left hand pane.
8. Need support for Page headers and footers including page numbers
9. Multi-page forms need better support for repeating fields like title.
10. Currently, non-solutions managers have security permissions to update the form. Is this by design?
11. The default save should be back to the record. Right now it's not even possible save the PDF back to the record.
November 21, 2023