Automate business card creation

Business cards are still highly relevant in physical prospecting. They enable you to maintain contact with potential customers, business partners or other professionals.

While the primary function of business cards is to communicate the professional contact details of the person giving them, they also give a company a serious and trustworthy image.

Nevertheless, creating this practical and differentiating tool can sometimes be time-consuming for companies with several hundred employees. For your corporate image, it's important that all employees representing your company have a business card that respects the same graphic charter.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to automate the creation of business cards for your employees. You'll see that this method can be adapted to the onboarding of new employees.

Creating your template with Abyssale

To get started, create a template on Abyssale.

In our case, we created a template from Scratch. We've given it the classic dimensions of a business card: 1004 x 650 px.

Add text elements and rename them. To do this, select the element and in the "Settings" tab in the right-hand column, rename the element according to its nature.

abyssale editor

In our example, we're creating a business card for a real estate agency. We therefore have text elements named as follows:

  • name
  • job_title
  • email
  • phone
  • office_name
  • office_address

If you wish, add a QR code to redirect users to a link. For our example, we've added a QR code to the link: www.immobilis.com (This is a fictitious link).

Create a Sheets file

To enable the automatic creation of a new business card as soon as a new employee is onboarded, you need to have a database that contains at least the information appearing on the business card.

Here's how to get started:

Create a new Google Sheets document and name each column in the first row.

google sheet file

In our example, we'll name the columns as follows:

  • Firstname & Lastname
  • Job title
  • Phone number
  • Email address
  • Office name
  • Office address

This document should contain the information of all your employees.

Create a new Make scenario

Now go to Make to automate the creation of a new business card every time you add a new collaborator to your Google Sheets document.

Create a new scenario and add a first Google Sheets module "Watch new rows". Then connect this module to the Google Sheets document you created in the previous step.

make google sheets module

Next, add a new Abyssale "Generate Single Image" module. Select your business card template. Then, in each element, add the corresponding Google Sheets variable.

make abyssale generate single image module

Here's the variable associated with each element for our example (Element = Google Sheets variable):

  • name = 1. firstname & lastname (A)
  • job_title = 1. Job title (B)
  • phone = 1. Phone number (C)
  • email = 1. email address (D)
  • office_name = 1. office name (E)
  • office_address = 1. office address (F)
  • All other elements remain empty

Once this is done, add a new Google Sheets module "Update a Row". Then go to your Google Sheets document. Add a column to hold the url of the business card corresponding to the collaborator.

In our example, we'll add the "Generated" column.

Once this is done, return to your Make scenario. Then, in the Google Sheets "Update a Row" module you've just created, connect your Sheets document.

make google sheets update a row module

Then fill in the elements according to your own variables. In our example, we'll proceed as follows:

  • Row number = 1. Row Number
  • Table contains header = Yes
  • Generated = 2. File: File url

Leave all other elements empty.

Test and print your scenario

Now that your scenario is ready, make sure everything works and test your scenario. On Make, click on "Run once".

To simplify the test, make sure you have set the schedule setting to "On demand". Once the test has been approved, you can adjust it as required.

You're done! You've just automated the creation of your business cards. Now, with just a few clicks, your employees and new recruits will have a business card in your corporate colors.

All you have to do is print it!

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