6 Google Docs automation ideas

If you're a knowledge worker, Google Docs is probably at the center of a lot of what you do. So you know better than anyone that creating and managing your docs can quickly become tiresome—especially if you create docs for repeat events like meetings, weekly recaps, or sales agreements. It's so easy to promise to create or update a doc and then just…forget to do it.

Instead of trying to manually wrangle your documents, you can use the Zapier Google Docs integration to streamline how you create and manage that content. Here are a few of the most popular ways to automate Google Docs. 

Table of contents

• Create new documents from a spreadsheet

• Turn form responses into documents

• Get notifications for new documents

• Create custom automations with webhooks

• Turn emails and messages into documents

• Save other content as Google Docs

Create new documents from a spreadsheet

If you work in sales or marketing, you have to respond very quickly to new customer sign-ups or demo requests that come in through events and other marketing channels. Otherwise, you can miss out on a potential sale—and the revenue that comes with it. 

Those leads often get stored in a spreadsheet. That means you'll need to check for a new row and then manually create an onboarding doc, sales agreement, or whatever else you need—all before you can even reach out to the lead. 

To make that prep work easier, you can use Zapier to automate the process. Every time there's a new or updated row in a specific spreadsheet, the Zap will create a new Google Doc using a template and include the data from the spreadsheet. 

If you need a little more flexibility, you can use a Zap to create a Google Doc using just the text in a new spreadsheet row—no template needed.

Turn form responses into documents

Online forms are everywhere. Your sales and marketing teams probably use them on your website and ads to collect leads, demo requests, and product feedback. Or maybe your HR team uses forms internally to collect new employee information or employee satisfaction data. 

Whatever you use forms for, automation is a great way to make following up on the responses much easier—especially if you get a high volume of submissions. 

For example, you can use a Zap to automatically create new Google Docs whenever there's a new form response. To make sure everything is formatted correctly, the documents can follow a specific template.

Or, if you want more flexibility, the Zap can simply create a Google Doc with the text from the form response. 

Get notifications for new documents

We've all been there: Someone on your team creates a brief, a draft, an agenda—and you totally miss it. If you're working with a large number of documents, you might think that's bound to happen. But it doesn't have to!

You can create an automated workflow that notifies you when a new doc is created. And those notifications can reach you wherever you spend most of your time, whether that's email, Slack, or another chat app. 

You don't have to be notified for every new document, either. You can use a Zap that triggers only when there's a new doc in a specific Google Docs folder.

If you need a little more privacy—or just don't want to disrupt a whole Slack channel of people with constant "new doc" notifications—the Zap can let you know via Slack DM.

You can also use the Zap to create Slack reminders for new docs instead of just sending a notification, which is a great option if you need to contribute to those documents but might not have time right away.

Create custom automations with webhooks

If you need a little more flexibility with how Google Docs are created, you can use automated workflows that trigger whenever Zapier catches a new webhook. These webhooks can come from a lead source, a custom form on a website, a digital product, or any place you might get info that you want to save.

Turn emails and messages into documents

We already covered why sending notifications for new Google Docs can be invaluable—but what if you want to save email and chat messages as documents? 

With Zapier, you can also create an automated workflow to do just that. Let's say you use an email alias to accept story pitches or comments from customers, for example. Whenever there's a new email in that Gmail inbox, the Zap will save the email's text as a Google Doc. 

You can also use a Zap to append chat messages from a specific channel to an existing document, which is a great way to save internal content like employee feedback.

Save other content as Google Docs

So far we've covered a lot of ways to save content that's coming to you, whether through email, Slack, forms, or webhooks. But what about content published elsewhere—like press mentions or content from video calls?

The good news is that Zapier is flexible, so you can also automatically create Google Docs for those items. Here are a couple of popular examples, but they're by no means the limit of what you can do with Zapier and Google Docs. 

Do more with your docs

Written language has existed for roughly 6,000 years, but it's time you bring your documents into the 21st century. With automation, you can turn Google Docs into a powerhouse app for managing content and saving things that might otherwise be overlooked or lost.

And this is just the start of what you can do with Google Docs and Zapier. What will you automate first?