This is a paid bot, and its usage will be counted toward your plan's credits limit. For more information about credit usage, refer to this article.
How the Pre-fill from Airtable bot works
Pre-fill altaFlow documents with data from Airtable bases. Map any column to a document field and the bot pulls the row values automatically when a recipient opens the document — no manual data transfer from Airtable needed.
Use case example: You work in the HR department of a company and often need to generate offer letters for new employees. You store employee information — names, positions, and salary details — in an Airtable database. Instead of manually transferring this information to offer letter templates each time, use the Pre-fill from Airtable bot to streamline the process.
How to set up
When the bot runs by default:
The Pre-fill from Airtable bot activates several times during one filling session, when:
- a recipient starts the signing process
- a recipient fills out a specific field in a document (requires additional condition settings).
Add the bot depending on your needs as described in this article. You may install this bot in the step, between the steps, or using the All Bots tab.
Find the Pre-fill from Airtable bot in the list of bots and click Install bot.
Connection settings
To connect the bot to your Airtable account, select Connect in the Connection settings section.
In the pop-up window, grant access to your Airtable workspace and its bases.
Once done, you will see successful connection via Airtable Auth.
Action settings
Select the base, table, and view:
Select a mode for pre-filling your document:
- Single line is set by default. In this way, data will be transferred from a certain cell in a row to a certain field in a document.
- Table option lets you transfer data from rows in a table to fields in a document.
Connect the Airtable column with the document field that should be pre-filled:
Select a matching type: Document field value or Recipient data. It helps to find the exact row from which you want to pull data. To do so, select the value in the sheet column first.
By selecting the Document field value, you can connect an Airtable column to a field in a document.
With the Recipient data option, you can find a specific row in a table by using the recipient's email address, first name, and last name. For example, when a recipient with a specified email opens a document, the row containing this email will be used to pre-fill the document's fields.
Once selected, the options on the right will automatically become active. Now you can select the corresponding value in the selected document that will be pre-filled.
Conditions
Set conditions to pre-fill from Airtable only when specific criteria are met. Common scenarios include:
Employee status filter: Pre-fill offer letters only when the Airtable "Status" column equals "Approved" — prevents pulling data on candidates still in review.
Department routing: Pull records only when the department field matches a specific value (e.g., "Engineering") — different Airtable bases can feed different workflows.
Empty field trigger: Only run pre-fill when a document field is empty — avoids overwriting manually entered values.
Recipient match required: Add a "recipient email is not empty" condition to prevent pre-fill on templates without a target recipient.
Learn more about bot conditions usage in the dedicated bot execution conditions article.
Advanced settings
Fine-tune how the bot pulls Airtable data:
Run frequency: Pre-fill runs several times per session by default (on open, on field change). Adjust to fire only on specific triggers if Airtable API rate limits are a concern.
Failure handling: If the Airtable API is unreachable or the record wasn't found, decide whether to skip pre-fill (recipient completes manually) or halt the workflow.
Document tags: Tag documents pre-filled from Airtable (e.g., "airtable-prefilled") to distinguish from manually entered records in your dashboard.
Learn more about adjusting Advanced settings in the bot setup glossary.