Fill, validate, and email PDF forms from webhook data with PDFops, Gmail, and Drive

Quick overview

This workflow receives a webhook payload with a PDF URL, form field values, and an email address, then downloads the fillable PDF, fills it using PDFops, and emails the completed PDF via Gmail.

How it works

1. Receives a POST webhook request containing pdfUrl, a fields object, and the recipient email address.
2. Downloads the blank fillable PDF from the provided URL using an HTTP request.
3. Sends the PDF and field mappings to PDFops to fill the form and produce a new filled PDF file.
4. Sends an email via Gmail to the provided address with the filled PDF attached.

Setup

1. Activate the workflow and copy the Production Webhook URL to the system that will submit the JSON payload.
2. Add a Gmail credential and confirm the sender account has permission to send emails to your recipients.
3. (Optional) Add a PDFops API credential to increase quota, and ensure your caller provides exact AcroForm field names in the fields object.

Requirements

• Self-hosted n8n with the n8n-nodes-pdfops community node installed (Settings > Community Nodes)
• Gmail credential for the send step
• Optional free PDFops API key - the keyless tier works at 100 requests per IP per month

Customization

• Swap Gmail for SMTP, Slack, or Google Drive as the delivery step
• Add a PDFops node with the Inspect Fields operation to validate output or discover field names
• Chain the PDFops Merge operation to bundle several filled forms into one packet

Additional info

This template uses the n8n-nodes-pdfops community node, so it runs on self-hosted n8n only (community nodes are not installable on n8n Cloud). Field names must match the PDF exactly: discover them with the node's Inspect Fields operation or the free browser inspector at pdfops.dev/tools/inspect.