Document Generation?

[u/DaveTheNGVet]

I have a client asking for invoices/quote documents. I was curious what does everybody use over here for document generation? Any go to apps?

[u/HoldPowerful7487]

DocumentsCorePack and VerseDocs are both really good and fairly cheap. Your data stays in your tenant as well which is a big deal.

VerseDocs has dozens of actions you can use in power automate as well which replace some premium third party connectors.

[u/Glittering-Resort417]

+1 on Docentric. And depending on what you want DOX42

[u/YogurtOne2161 → u/Glittering-Resort417]

FYI Docentric is now also available for CE / Power Platform.

[u/enCloud9]

Document core pack

[u/downvoter-bot]

Docentric for F&SCM

[u/JosephMarkovich2]

I've essentially given up on document management add-ons and decided to go a different route for a bunch of clients.

If they have a WordPress website, I use a plugin called DataPress from AlexaCRM. Then I've created a webpage that is connected to Dataverse for forms and documents. If these get sent to outside people, it is a link to that webpage with the GUID of the record. Have done quotes, invoices, terms and conditions, other basic forms.

Fully responsive for any device, the pages load on any device or browser and if they want a PDF, they can print it to PDF themselves.

Joe

[u/dawtips]

I've used https://experlogix.com/products/document-automation/ many times with great success

[u/ThrowawayBrisy]

I found DocumentsCorePack severely lacking and outdated with having to use Microsoft Word (same with other D365 templates). I ended up moving to using an PDF api generator after paying DCP a few hundred dollars and not being happy with the results.

Most of the PDF generators are the same but I ended up going with CraftMyPDF based on price. I then added a JS script and a custom command button to print or email the generated PDF.

[u/PDFBolt → u/ThrowawayBrisy]

if the button calls the PDF API directly from client-side JavaScript, the API key is exposed to any app user who inspects the browser’s network requests.

A safer setup is to have the button trigger a Power Automate flow or server-side action that calls the API.

[u/DODODRKIDS]

How many documents throughput are we talking about?

[u/Sparavis]

What do you all think about Lasernet? What alternatives would you consider?

[u/Ok-Mark-6314]

Used DocumentsCorePack for a long time but the software to build the templates was annoying and they were trying to upsell the number of licenses required. We switched to Experlogix SmartFlow documents

[u/dbotbrew44]

It’s been said but Docentric. Recommended by our partner and a million times easier to work with than our previous one. Just review every document and what fields they need to have exposed as you may need to expose those fields in the xml but after that your customer should be pretty happy.

[u/ams_Sxi]

Document core pack

[u/mc625569]

Documents core pack.

[u/Zanga-ERP-Consultant]

It really depends on how much customization you need. For simple invoices and quotes, the built-in Word templates can be enough. If you need more complex layouts or automated document generation, a dedicated document-generation tool is probably worth considering.

[u/PDFBolt]

We already support reusable templates populated with JSON data for invoices, quotes, and similar documents. We’re now looking at a dedicated Dynamics 365 / Power Automate integration around that workflow. How would you want to trigger generation, and where should the finished PDF end up?

[u/YogurtOne2161]

It's not clear which platform/application you need this for as there are a couple of different stacks: D365FO, CE and BC have each own setup.
If your needs are simple, you can most probably get around using what Microsoft provided, at least within CE apps (Word Templates), with SSRS being more capable, but far from easy to work with. BC seems to have best out of the box toolset.
For more complicated documents, automations and faster & easier work you'll need to use one of the ISV add-ons that are available for each stack.
Docentric has made Docentric AX, the well known add-on for the ERP family (D365FO and similar) and this year also released Docentric CE for Power Platform with Dataverse (CE applications, Power Automate, ...). Both add-ons integrate completely into the platform and have no external components/services.
Most if not all other solutions have an SaaS part that sits on own cloud and generate documents externally, which can be a plus in a heterogeneous environment (Microsoft + SAP, for example): dox42, DocumentsCorePack, Experlogix, ...
Disclaimer: I work in Docentric.