What’s in a name? When it comes to naming your document, it is typically the finishing touch, but it is also a critical part of the document generation process. An appropriate file name gives your document a polished first impression while it’s being opened by a customer, colleague or senior management.

When naming Conga Composer generated output files, you have some options. The output file name can either be the generic template name you uploaded or one that dynamically changes based on the information included within the document. With the OFN Conga Composer parameter you can have an output file name as customized as the information inside your document.

When generating a template, by default, Conga Composer will use the name of the uploaded template as the document name. Therefore, if you upload a template saved as “AccountPlanTemplate.doc” but want to change the file name to something specific to each account, you will need to customize the document using a parameter. To customize the file name, Conga offers the Output File Name parameter.

Within your custom button URL add the OFN parameter ( &OFN=[text] ) to override the default output file name and set the output file name to your desired name.

Here are a few best practices when setting up your OFN value

1.   To include spaces use plus signs (+) or underscores (_)

•      Example: &OFN=Monthly+Inventory+Report

•      Output: Monthly Inventory Report

*Note: Internet Explorer 7 will replace spaces in a filename with the characters “%20” if the output file is opened before saving to disk. For example, the file above would appear as Monthly%20Inventory%20Report.doc if the file is opened before saving to disk.

•      Example: &OFN=Monthly_Inventory_Report

•      Output: Monthly_Inventory_Report

2.   Include hyphens or dashes when naming the output file name with the OFN parameter

•      Example: &OFN=Company+—+Account Plan

•      Output: Company — Account Plan

*Note some symbols are not supported in filenames. \ / : * ? " < > |

3.   Choose Static or Dynamic: Choose to include special fields within the OFN parameter if you want a more customized document specific to the account.

•      Static: &OFN=Monthly+Inventory+Report

•      Dynamic: &OFN={!Account.Name}+—+Account Plan

4.   To avoid issues with ampersands (&), include the SUBSTITUTE() function within your URL field. For example if your reference field contains an ampersand (Account Name = X&Y Construction), add the SUBSTITUTE function to replace ampersands with a substitute value:

•      Example: &OFN=SUBSTITUTE (Account.Name, "&", "{+and+}”)

•      Output: Account Name would instead yield “X and Y Construction”

It’s as simple as that; with one quick addition of the OFN parameter to the custom button URL, you’ve fully customized the name of your Conga Composer generated document.

Time to get more advanced. Are you using multiple templates? Multi-template Output File Name sets the output file name when using multiple templates or running batches (e.g. with Conga Conductor), affecting the file name of .zip files or consolidated PDFs. To standardize the file name of multiple templates use the MTOFN parameter.
Example: &MTOFN={!Account.Name}+-+Invoice.

Now that you’re equipped to name file names, start customizing! And to help you get started here are some popular ways to set up OFN parameters. Add your own in the comments below.

1.   &OFN={!Account.Name}+—+Account+Plan

a.   Would generate…XYZ Widget Company — Account Plan

2.   &OFN={!Account.Name}+Account+Plan

a.   Would generate…XYZ Widget Company Account Plan

3.   &OFN=SUBSTITUTE (Account.Name, "&", "{+and+}”)

a.   If company was: X&Y Widget Company

b.   It would generate: X and Y Widget Company

4.   &OFN=Quote+for+{!Contact_Name}

a.   Would generate…Quote for Jason Smith

5.   &OFN={!Today}_AccountPlan

a.   Would generate…8/22/2014_AccountPlan

6.   &OFN=Quote+Version+{!Opportunity.Version__c}

a.   Would generate…Quote Version 2.doc

You’re ready to install Conga Composer and start building your solution.  Great!  Taking time to review some of the best practices below will help ensure your Conga Composer solution is a success. 

1. Change the default installation profile access

​During the installation of Conga Composer, you will be prompted to select profile access if you have profiles enabled in your Salesforce instance.  If possible, change access to “All Users” instead of the “System Administrators Only” default.  It is much easier to lock down profile permissions than trying to go back and “unlock” profile permissions.  When unlocking profile permissions you encounter field-level security, object permissions and other settings that can be tedious to sort through.

2. Determine the document content

When setting up any solution with Conga Composer, it’s important to first identify what information you want to include in your document.  Data location and data relationships often dictate from where your users will launch your solution.  You might begin building your solution on Object A, but then realize you need to pull in data from Object D, and no relationship exists between the two objects. Save yourself wasted time and frustration by identifying the information you need ahead of time.

3. Be careful when creating new buttons/links by copying and pasting

Be cautious of spaces that can end up in your custom Conga Composer button/link URL from copying and pasting.  Extra spaces will break your URL and result in an error message when you attempt to run the Conga Composer solution.  An easy way to check for spaces is to place your cursor at the end of each line of the URL and hit the Backspace key until your cursor is next to the last character in the line of the URL.

4. Use the button/link description

Use the “Description” field when creating a new custom button or link to describe your solution.  Doing so allows other individuals to understand what exactly the button or link provides.  In the event someone is “cleaning” up the page layout, having a clear description of the button or link can save your button from accidentally ending up on the chopping block.  Using the description to outline what your button or link solution entails can also help you to remember what the button or link is for should you forget or go on to build additional buttons or links on the same page layout.

5. Check user profiles/permissions

It takes time to build your solution so be sure your end users have the ability to access the solution.  Hopefully you were able to grant access to all users during the installation process (if you have profiles enabled in your Salesforce instance).  In the event you missed this step or modified user permissions since installing, you’ll want to consider object permissions, custom tab settings, etc.  Users, for example, must have at least “Read” access to the Conga Email Template object if they are using Conga Composer to send out a Conga Email template.  For further detail on the necessary permissions/settings, this article is a great reference.

Field- level security is another factor to keep in mind.  If you are merging in a field that has visibility defined on select user profiles, the merged document will not show any data from that field if visibility for the field is not enabled on the user’s profile (Enterprise Edition and above).  For Professional Edition, this means ensuring that the field is included on the page layout.

If you are using Salesforce reports, be certain your users have profile permissions to “Export Reports” in addition to “Run Reports” and “API Enabled.”  If you do not wish to grant these permissions to your users, you can use SOQL Queries as an alternative.

6. Use report/query aliases

If you are adding Salesforce reports or queries to your Conga Composer button/link URL, it’s helpful to provide an alias for the report or query.  This allows you to help keep track of what information is contained in your report or query dataset.  If someone else takes over or needs to troubleshoot the solution you have created, an alias will help them identify what information corresponds with the various datasets.

If you have other best practices you’ve discovered when building your Conga Compose solution, let us know!

There are only 12 short days to Dreamforce '14, and we're excited for four days of face time with customers, prospects and partners. Here are 5 reasons to come see us at our booth, in a session or at a networking event: 

1. Get a demo of the latest in document generation

We’ll be in Moscone North booth #N1121 giving demos of the latest enhancements and new features in Conga products. Stop by to get a first look at:

• Conga Composer Solution Manager
• New Formula Builder for Conga Conductor and Conga Workflow
• Conga Composer for Salesforce1

2. Attend a session to learn from Conga customers, partners and employees

With 13 sessions this year featuring Conga solutions, there’s something for everyone. Curious how to generate batches of documents? Besse Medical will show you how they send thousands of order confirmations and shipping notices at once. Want to learn how to create an end-to-end sales process your team will actually want to use? Join Orbitz for a detailed look at how they transformed contract approval and execution. Plus this year we’re bringing you an abbreviated class from Conga University.

See the full list of sessions.

3. Schwag

Swing by to say hello at booth #N1121 in Moscone North and pick up some schwag. Make sure to stop by during the main Welcome Reception in the Expo Center on Monday between 6:00 and 8:00 pm for special, surprise schwag. Hint: It matches our Hawaiian print shirts.

4. Have lunch with us

Grab a bite with our two MVPs Becka Dente (@SFDC_Nerd) and Peter Terhune (@CongaPete). They’ll be sharing tips to create customized account plans, contracts, quotes, invoices and more at the Yerba Buena Gardens on Wednesday from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm.

5. Meet our international Conganeers

Our Head Congaroo and Manager of APAC Operations, Jarrod Hunt, is looking forward to meeting other APAC attendees at the welcome reception at the Embarcadero Ferry Building on Monday evening.

Senior business analyst and resident Conga Cowboy, Ross Evans, is also joining us from our UK office. Not word yet if the boots will also be making an appearance.  

We're getting ready for Dreamforce 2014 at the Conga Ranch!

Shelley Hoolihan, Senior Product Specialist at Conga here in Broomfield, Colorado and Jarrod Hunt, Manager of APAC Operations at the Sydney, Australia office are going over some commonly used colloquialisms from the land down under. Special thanks to Shelley and Jarrod for sharing their best Aussie phrases. How many can you guess? Also don't forget to stop by our booth at Dreamforce #N1121 and meet both Shelley and Jarrod in person next week.

G'day mate!

Ross Evans, Business Analyst at Conga's EMEA office in the United Kingdom and I decipher some common Cockney rhyming phrases. What is Cockney rhyming? Common in the East End of London, Cockney slang involves replacing a common word with a rhyming phrase of two or three words and then in almost all cases omitting the secondary rhyming word.

See for yourself in this quick video and don't forget to stop by our booth at Dreamforce #N1121 and meet Ross in person this week!

Shelley Hoolihan, Senior Product Specialist at Conga here in Broomfield, Colorado, Jarrod Hunt, Manager of APAC Operations at the Sydney, Australia office and Ross Evans, Business Analyst at our EMEA office in the United Kingdom are going over different pronunciations according to an Aussie, an American and a Brit.

This is also the last day you can meet these three Conganeers in person at Dreamforce. Don't forget to stop by our booth #N1121! 

• Backslash 
• Lowercase “b” (for text to be inserted before)
• Text/punctuation/spacing in quotation marks after the merge field name

We also appended an additional backslash, lowercase “f” (for text to be inserted after) and a percent sign.  Our merge field, “Discount” is a percent field.  The percent sign added to our number automatically in Salesforce however, is not part of the raw data so it is not merged in to the document.  Therefore, we included a percent sign as text to be inserted after our merge field.

Change is good! And when it comes to Conga’s parameters for activity logging, field updates and attachments, Conga Composer Release 8 is a good change. I’m going to walk you through the differences between Release 7 and 8 and let you know how to transition between the two to make it easier to customize your Composer solutions.

Conga activity logging parameters are designed to help you log and track activities and affect the Activity Logging of the Conga Composer dialog box and Activity History fields. After the parameters have been added to your Composer solution, Composer will log activities and/or update fields. Common practices are using Activity Logging parameters to pre-fill values for subject and follow-up dates.

In the image below you can visually see that the parameters used for Activity Logging for Composer 8 vs. Composer 7 are much more streamlined and clear to what their function truly is. Parameters are named clearly to match what function they perform and are also used in order of how you would interact with the UI.

The Composer 8 UI is more intuitive and user-friendly, and we wanted the parameters that control this UI to be just as intuitive. The SC parameters control the Save Copy functionality. The AC parameters are clearly named to control the Activity Logging functions, and the UF0 parameter controls Update Fields.

This means no more guessing as to what that parameter actually does and no more having to remember what order to put them into your solution. They will be added to your solution in the order that they are numbered.  AC0 will enable the Activity Logging, and AC1, AC2 and AC3 will control the specific aspects of the function.

Now let’s take a closer look at how the process looks for each release.

Composer 7

Let’s start with the old way. In Composer 7, a combination of parameters &LG4 and &LGAttachOption are used to define activity logging, field updates and attachment properties. It can be difficult to produce the correct combination of parameters to get the desired output, and it changes whether or not you want to create a task record with your Conga Composer solution. The use of multifunctional parameters &LG3 and &LG4 to turn on activity logging and attach files/set-up attachment options complicates the process.

For Example:

To create a task, a follow-up task, attach the output to Salesforce Chatter and update fields you would need to add these parameters to your button:

But what if you want to update fields and attachments, but do not want to create a task record? In Composer 7, this is tricky…

1. First of all you would use the &LG4 parameter value that does not create a task record. Therefore, you have to go back to the beginning of your URL and change parameter value to 2. Not always as intuitive but required for the correct output.
    
2. To attach a file and not set a task record, you would also have to change the &LG3 parameter value to 2.

The parameters &LG4 and &LG3 are used in both examples mentioned and they need to be used in conjunction with each other correctly for the solution to work. This confusion has been eliminated in Composer 8.

Composer 8

Composer 8 uses new, more clear and concise parameters for activity logging and updating fields. They logically follow the format of the user interface.

For Example:

Here’s the same examples earlier for Composer 7, recreated for Composer 8. First we want to create a task, a follow-up task, attach the output to Salesforce Chatter and update fields.

Composer 8 really shines when we want to update fields and attachments, but do not want to create a task record. It also follows a very intuitive process making it easy to check off every step of setting up your URL with no more having to guess on ordering. Now is the time to make the transition to Composer 8 and start setting up your Activity Logging parameters! 

On Wednesday we spent the day at the Salesforce1 World Tour in New York City talking to customer, partners and prospects. I love the insights we gain at these events.  After attending a few of the Salesforce city tours and Dreamforce this year, it’s clear that quotes are the hot thing on the AppExchange right now, and there’s a lot of confusion about the differences between document generation and CPQ (configure, price, quote) apps. I was asked a few times this week “Why would I pick Conga over [insert CPQ] provider?”  

It’s natural when two companies both say they do quotes to want to find out how they stack up against each other, but it’s not that simple – sometimes we’re competitors, sometimes we’re partners and sometimes we’re not even close to the right solution for you. Let’s work through three scenarios to figure out what’s the best solution for you.

Scenario #1:

What you’re looking for:  A tool to help the sales team sell – something that will guide them through the process to ensure that the correct products are added to the opportunity with the proper pricing

What you need: A CPQ application

For companies with a complicated pricing model, complex solutions with a lot of product components in their price book or who sell a mix of physical products and services that are contingent upon each other, a CPQ is a fantastic solution. A CPQ app will simplify how your sales team builds opportunities in Salesforce. Rather than blindly stumbling through pages and pages of a price book, a CPQ app will guide your sales team through each opportunity to ensure they sell the appropriate products, don’t forget to add necessary product line items and correctly price each opportunity. Depending on what needs to end up in your final quote this may be all you need. Jump down to scenario #3 to find out more.

Scenario #2:

What you’re looking for: A standardized quote solution that can be quickly to set up by your administrator, will be easy to use for your sales team and will produce accurate quotes every time

What you need: A document generation application

If you’re happy with the way you’re currently using Salesforce to sell your products, but still struggling to achieve accurate, consistent and professional quotes then you need a document generation app. Document generation solutions leverage standard Salesforce functionality – like the Opportunity and Quote objects and price books – for a straightforward and quick implementation. This will enable you to include data from multiple different objects on your quote, format the quote to your exact requirements and automate quote creation and delivery to one click. No need to rethink your sales process or add additional complexity.

Scenario #3:

What you’re looking for: Completely customizable quote templates, ability to include data from any standard or custom object on the quote

What you need: A document generation application and a CPQ application

We regularly work with customers who love the way their CPQ app helps them sell, but still need a more sophisticated quoting solution. CPQ apps do a fantastic job of configuring and pricing opportunities and can create basic quote documents. If you're happy with the quote provided by the CPQ, then by all means save your money and don't buy document generation. However, if you need more powerful data retrieval, want to include complex content or have several documents to automate, implementing a document generation app to handle the “Q” part of CPQ makes sense.

A document generation application enables you to retrieve data from anywhere in Salesforce, include rich content (images, tables, graphs, etc.), group and summarize data and conditionally display content depending on your business rules. Plus, you’ll be able to create contracts, invoices, presentations, account plans, reports and other documents using the same application, which makes for a simpler learning curve for both admins and end users.   

Yesterday we were happy to welcome the Denver User Group back to the Conga ranch. As always we had a strong lineup of agenda topics, lively discussion and good food (thanks Sundog!).

For those of you who were unable to attend, here are some highlights of the event. Hope to see you next time.

Salary Survey Results

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. There was a 40% increase in responses this year with only 18% of respondents being consultants. The majority of the remaining respondents were administrators who managed a fairly evenly distributed number of users.

So how’d we do?

• The good news: We all got raises. The average annual salary of all respondents increased by about 7% to $88,807.
• The bad news: There is a large income disparity among men and women.  Females respondents earned on average only $78,395 to their male counterparts’ $101,070. There was some speculation that this could be due to a lower portion of women in developer roles. Peter is going to crunch some more numbers to figure out if this disparity holds true across roles.  

Other interesting findings

• Does it pay to be certified? Absolutely. People with one certification earned on average $4,660 more than non-certified people.  This trend continued as people earned more certifications.

• Considering which certification to tackle first? Check out this chart.

Salesforce University

Speaking of certification, Karen from Salesforce University joined the group remotely to answer questions.  

Q: How should someone prepare to take a certification exam?

A: There are many resources available. Here are Karen’s recommendations:

• Salesforce Certification Website
  • Each certification (under the Credentials tab) has an accompanying Study Guide

• Help & Training in the Success Community
  • There are also a variety of instructor-led and online training classes (some free, some require premier)
  • Use articles to study up on particular features once you have a good foundation of Salesforce knowledge

• Certification Prep Classes
  • Ideal candidates have knowledge and experience with Salesforce, but need to brush up for the exam
  • 1 day prep class (Mon, Tue, Wed) that includes business-based problem solving, knowledge checkpoints and sample questions
  • 1 exam day(Thur or Fri)
  • No Denver dates announced yet, but stay tuned

• Other resources suggested by the group
  • www.sfdc99.com – website run by David Liu, MVP and Salesforce Technical Architect at Google
  • Study groups – some MVPs run this one

Q: Why don’t you tell us our pass/fail percentage?

A: This is the most frequent question Karen receives. Providing additional feedback is very high on their list of enhancements, although it is unlikely we’ll ever know our exact pass/fail percentage. Rather, Salesfore University wants to provide topic level feedback so you can know which topics you need to spend more time studying.

Karen also mentioned that our user group has a higher percentage of certified members than the other groups and that early results show that people who attend one of the certification prep classes have a higher pass rate than those who don’t.

Sundog

Sundog shared some excellent tips for marketing, communities and sales cloud.

Marketing

1. Integrate personas into your campaigns
   • Add a persona field to your Leads, Contact and Campaign objects
   • You can populate the persona field on leads/contacts based on progressive profiling or lead gen rep
   • Example personas for B2B: Number Cruncher, User in the Trenches
2. Structure your campaigns to maximize the insights you can glean
   • Use campaign hierarchies
   • Example structure: Product Line > Segment > Channel
     
3.   Score your leads

Communities

1. Engage partner through co-op marketing
2. Measure marketing success through integrated campaigns
3. Monitor sales performance
   • Communities enable collaboration with partners on forecasting, closing deals, etc.

Sales Cloud

1. Align sales stage to the customer journey
2. Create campaigns off of your existing sales process
3. Utilize sales reach to bring micro campaigns into your sales organization
   • Enable sales reps to add their prospects into the right marketing campaigns

Word Templates

When working with Word templates, you can use the RowCount feature to display the number of rows in any detail dataset.  It’s a simple merge field that can be used like so:

 

{{RowCount:DataSetName}}

 

If I had a report with an alias of Contacts, then I could display the number of rows in that report by using this field in my Word template:

 

 

RowCount with IF Fields

 

The RowCount feature is particularly useful when used with a Word IF field to evaluate the number of rows in a dataset.  Depending on the result, you could configure the template to display different content when it’s merged.

 

Let’s explore a basic example that’s very similar to the project status report use case mentioned previously.  Let’s assume I’m creating an account brief document and I’m using a Salesforce report to retrieve Contact records related to an Account record.  If any Contact records show up on my report, I want to display them in my output file as rows in a table.  If zero Contact records show up on my report, I want to display text that indicates “There are no contacts for this account.”  I could set up an IF field in my Word template to accomplish this:

 

 

Let's deconstruct this IF statement to fully understand its components:

 

 

{{RowCount:Contacts}} – This special merge field is the first expression in the IF field.  It will return the number of rows in the Contacts dataset.

 

0 – This static value of zero is the second expression in the IF field.  We’ll compare the result of the RowCount field to this number.

 

There are no contacts for this account. – This is the true text for our IF field.  If our field evaluates to true, meaning that there are zero rows in the Contacts dataset, this text will display.

 

 - Although it’s not strictly text, the Contacts table is our false text for our IF field.  This entire table will display if the Contacts dataset returns more than zero rows, merging each record from the dataset into corresponding rows in the table.

 

Let's take a look at the two possible results upon merging our Word template:

 

 

 

PRO TIP: If you’re not merging detail data into a table using this technique, please review this Knowledgebase article for instructions on how to apply the necessary formatting to your IF field.

 

TableHide

 

The TableHide feature offers another handy way to conditionally remove data and content from your output file in response to the number of rows returned by a given dataset.  However, this feature acts as more of an “on/off” switch than as a method of counting the number of rows in a report or query.

 

TableHide is used in conjunction with a specific dataset, just like RowCount.  Sticking with the previous example, let’s assume I want to simply remove the contacts table from my output file if my report returns zero Contact records, rather than have it display the “There are no contacts…” text.

 

I could set up my contacts table like this:

 

 

If my Contacts datset returned zero rows, this entire table would be removed from my output file.

 

TableHide is an incredibly useful feature, but the key difference between it and the aforementioned RowCount technique is that RowCount can be used with IF fields to conditionally display content if a dataset returns zero records.  When using TableHide, you simply have the ability to remove content if a dataset returns zero records.  In this sense, RowCount is a bit more flexible.

 

Excel Templates

 

Dynamic COUNTA Formula

 

When working with Excel templates, you can use a very simple COUNTA function to automatically count the number of rows in a Conga Composer dataset.

 

Here’s how we could set this up in an Excel template:

 

 

The key to creating this type of function is the single-cell range that’s been applied to the COUNTA function.  In this case, it’s referencing a cell that contains detail data (Contact First Name in C2) and will thus replicate for every Contact record included in the report.

 

In the output file, we see that the single-cell range has expanded and is now counting the number of rows returned by my report:

 

 

The result of this function could then be referenced by other functions in an Excel template to show or hide content and perform further calculations.

 

PPTX Templates

 

SOQL Query with Aggregate Function

 

When using Conga Composer with PowerPoint templates, you can use a SOQL query with an aggregate function to count the number of rows in a dataset.

 

In this case, you would create two datasets: the first would be a normal Salesforce report or SOQL query that returns the data you want to merge, and the second would be a SOQL query that uses an aggregate function to count the number of rows in the first dataset.  The same filter criteria would need to be applied to each of these datasets to ensure accurate counting.

 

To provide an example, let’s stick with the previous scenario of merging a table of Contact records as part of an account brief use case to see how this works.  Here are the two SOQL queries I would use:

 

 

As you can see, the Detail Data Query is set up to return specific fields from Contact records related to a particular parent Account.  In contrast, the Aggregated Query is configured to use a COUNT aggregate function on the ‘Id’ field that will simply return the number of Contact records related to a particular parent Account.  Contacts are sorted alphabetically by ‘FirstName’ in the Detail Data Query using an ORDER BY clause, but because the Aggregated Query will always return just one row of data, there’s no need to sort its results.

 

Over in my PowerPoint template, I could create a slide in the template like this:

 

 

 

1. I’ve given our aggregated query an alias of CountContacts and referenced the aggregate function that will return the number of Contact records related to my Account.  NOTE: This merge field uses the technique for merging individual values from detail datasets in PowerPoint templates.
2. I’ve given our detail data query an alias of Contacts and created a table that will dynamically merge Contact records as table rows.
3. The SlideHide feature for PowerPoint templates will automatically remove this entire slide from the output file if my Contacts query returns zero records.

 

If this template is merged from an Account record that has 5 related Contacts, our output file would look like this:

 

 

If the report returned zero records, the entire slide would be removed from the output file as a function of using SlideHide.

 

Thanks for reading!  Lastly, I want to extend a big thank you to John W. for submitting the blog topic suggestion that led to this post.  If you have an idea or a request for a future topic on the Conga Blog, you can submit one here.

 

Until next time!

How do you handle a huge number of annual subscription renewals in Salesforce?  Without spending hours creating each renewal by hand?  At Conga, we found the answer to this question was simple – use Conga Composer!  

So what’s our overall process?

1. Our super Sales Operations (Sales Ops) team runs a Salesforce report identifying Accounts up for renewal
2. Sales Ops clones the most recent Opportunity record and then updates any necessary fields
3. Sales Ops uses Conga Composer to generate and send the renewal invoice  (alternatively we could schedule our renewal invoices every month)

Let’s dig a little deeper into each part of the process.

Salesforce Report

We created a custom report, pulling in Accounts with Opportunities.  For the time frame, we are referencing a custom field, “Renewal Process Date” with a date range equal to “This Month.” Using summary format and grouping on the “Account Owner: Full Name” and “Account Name” fields provides Sales Ops with a nice overview of each Business Analyst's Accounts and the related Opportunities per Account.  

Clone Opportunity

Using the standard Clone button on the Opportunity works well for cloning an Opportunity, and we used this method for quite some time.  After cloning, we would take some time and add in Contact Roles and clear out data in the “Amount Paid” field, the “Reminder Sent” field, etc.  Recently, we’ve been able to reduce time spent updating the cloned record with an app called PowerClone.  To utilize PowerClone, we took some APEX code and created a new custom button on the Opportunity record.  PowerClone allows us to clone the related Contact Roles to the new cloned record, specify default values for fields on the new cloned record (e.g. the field, “Type” is always equal to “Renewal” on the new record) and set certain fields to be cleared of data (e.g. the field, “Date Paid” is always set to be blank on the new record). 

Generate and Send

Once the cloned Opportunity is complete, Sales Ops clicks a custom link on the Opportunity record and Conga Composer generates the renewal invoice.  Data is merged in from the Contact, the Account, the Opportunity Owner, and Opportunity Products.  

Sales Ops is then taken to an email preview screen where they can review the attached renewal invoice PDF and make any changes to the email template if necessary.

Composer saves our Sales Ops team time creating renewal invoices since they don’t need to copy and paste information.  Composer’s ability to output the renewal invoice in PDF format ensures the invoice content remains secure and unchanged. Utilizing Composer’s activity logging features allows us to access a copy of the renewal invoice in Notes & Attachments on the Opportunity should we need to reference the document in the future.  If we didn’t want to double check the renewal invoice before sending it out, we could fully automate the renewal process with Conga Conductor.  We could even schedule Conga Conductor to generate and send renewals on a certain day and time every month, every week, or even every day.  Remember, you can always try out Conga products for 30 days for free.  Visit the AppExchange to get started!  

Account plans are a powerful way to keep everyone on the same page on what’s happening with key accounts. At Conga we’ve seen all variations on account plans from simple Word-based reports for sales/account management to beautiful PowerPoint presentations for client meetings. The one thing they all have in common is the need to aggregate data from multiple objects and reports in Salesforce into one presentable format.

After seeing so many account plans, we’ve compiled four tips that we’ve seen make account planning solutions more effective. For the purpose of this post I’m assuming we’re using a PowerPoint template; however, all of the same principles can be applied to Word documents as well.

1.   Create an Archive of Each Account’s Plans

By design, account plans are constantly evolving documents as growth strategies are implemented and targets are met. For example, at the start of Q1 the sales manager may identify upsell opportunities for two additional products for Acme Corp, and the account plan would detail the sales manager’s strategy to close these opportunities. At the beginning of Q2, we’d hope the sales manager was successful and has identified new growth opportunities for Acme Corp.

Without an archive it can be difficult to understand whether or not the account plan strategies are driving more business. Thankfully, account plans generated with Conga Composer provide a snapshot of an account’s status at a specific point in time and can be configured to create an account plan archive for you. 

Here’s How:

Use the “save a copy” parameters to save the generated output file to the Notes & Attachments list on the Account record. Remember to first enable saving copies with &SC0.

&SC0=1

&SC1=Attachments

Conversely, you could tell Composer to save the output to Content, Chatter, Google Drive or SpringCM.

2.   Dynamically Personalize the File Name for the Account

The output file name is an important consideration for two reasons. First, your internal naming conventions may not be appropriate for account plans that will be shared externally. Second, your sales reps will be generating account plans for all of their accounts multiple times throughout the year. Give them a clear naming system to help them find the desired account plan quickly. As an added benefit dynamically personalizing the output file name helps keep your account plan archives clean and searchable.    

By default on standard objects, Conga Composer will append the record name to the name of your template when saving a file. For example, if your template name is “AcctPlan Approved 18Aug2014” than the output file name will be “AcctPlan Approved 18Aug2014 – Acme Corp.” We can do better than that. I would recommend the file name should incorporate the type of document, account name and date generated, but you can customize it to your business needs. 

Here’s How:

Use the “output file name” parameter to tell Composer to name the file “Account Plan for Acme Corp – 1_21_2015.”

&OFN=Account+Plan+for+{!Account.Name}+-+{!TODAY()}

3.   Automatically Ditch Bad Slides

Salesforce data completeness is a constant work-in-process, and you’ll need to consider what to do if a slide merges empty due to a lack of data. Typically you would want to hide the slide when the presentation is merged lest the user forget to delete it before a meeting.

Here’s How:

Use the SlideHide feature in your PowerPoint template to exclude the slide if there is no data.

{{SlideHide:Opportunities}}

In the above example, I’m using a report alias called Opportunities. To achieve this behavior in Word, use the TableHide feature.

4.   Mix and Match Slides without Lifting a Finger

Once you’ve got an account plan working for one set of users, another department will inevitably want to add a few slides. Rather than trying to maintain multiple separate versions of the account plan template or broker a compromise between the departments, dynamically assemble the final output based on your business rules. 

First you’ll need to determine who owns each set of slides. For example, most departments will agree on how to present opportunities based on how the accounting department recognizes pipeline and closed business. Marketing typically sets the look and feel of the actual slides – what colors and fonts are used, the logo, etc. Other departments will own additional content.

Once you've determined who owns each set of slides, you’ll need to understand the common or shared slides used in each variation of the account plan. Think of this set of slides as the core PowerPoint deck to which Composer will add additional slides depending on the final desired output.

Finally, you will need to tell Composer which criteria to use to assemble the final presentation. Composer can create a different version of the deck based on the running user’s profile or criteria on the Account record. For example, the VP of Sales may want to generate a different slide deck than the CFO, or enterprise accounts may require a more detailed presentation than SMB accounts.

Here’s How:

1.    Create formula field to evaluate your business logic and determine which PowerPoint templates to include when Composer runs 

2.    Set the &TemplateID parameter equal to your formula field

3.    Use the “assemble PowerPoint files” parameter to stitch the different slides into one deck

&APF=1

We've got a whole post on how to do this. The Word equivalent of this functionality is the &AWD parameter.

What are your tips for effective account plans? We’d love to hear them in the comments!

It’s hard to believe it’s rapidly approaching the one year mark since Bradley Haines joined the Conga team. If you’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Bradley on the phone or over email, you already know he is a wealth of knowledge and always happy to assist customers.  You may not know, however, just how much Bradley loves gigabytes (at least one in particular!).  Read on for more fun facts about Bradley. 

Q: Can you describe your role and what you do at Conga?
I'm a Customer Success Business Analyst.  I assist current customers with their existing solutions, improve the efficiency of their processes, troubleshoot any issues that arise, and provide advice on best practices to implement new solutions.

Q: What's your favorite part about working at Conga?
Collaborating with my colleagues to resolve challenging customer support requests, then celebrating another successful week at Friday happy hour.  We also have an awesome game night every few weeks at the office.

Q: What's the coolest solution you helped a customer build?
A contract sent for e-signature initiated via Conga Workflow when a status field was changed.  The document template had dynamic tables of account information that conditionally were shown based off criteria in Salesforce, and the recipients were dynamically assigned from formula fields on the opportunity.

Q: What do you like to do when you're not at Conga?
Mountain bike, plan trips to music festivals, and check out new breweries.

Q: What's your favorite use case for a Conga Composer solution?
Using a list view button with Conga Conductor to quickly generate multiple documents without having to go to each individual record.

Q: Do you have any pets?
Gigabyte (German Shepherd / Rhodesian Ridgeback Mix)

Q: What's something your customers would be surprised to learn about you?
Despite being in a landlocked state, I really enjoy sailing.

Q: What's your favorite candy bar?
Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Squares

Conga is hiring Business Analysts!  Check out our Careers page to learn more.

It’s easy enough to throw in some underlining and blue font color to give the appearance of a clickable email link in a document, but what about turning the text into a functional email link?  One of our awesome Business Analysts, Ryan Marks, explains the process of creating clickable email links in today’s post.  Ryan joined Conga just about a year ago and when he’s not assisting customers, he spends his time in the mountains, on the golf course or traveling the world.

If you’ve ever tried getting an email link into your merged document, you may have noticed this isn’t always straight forward.

To start, let’s take a look at how to create an email link. To create an email link, we can use HTML code. This “mailto” hyperlink is not as scary as it sounds. As an example, for my name and email the HTML would be:

<a href="mailto:rmarks@congamerge.com">Ryan Marks</a>

This string indicates the email address for the mailto and also sets the display name of the link:

<a href="mailto:email@abc.com">Display Name</a>

With this text inside a field on the record and a little formatting in the template (discussed later in the post), you are able to populate a clickable email link in your output.

Now that we have the foundation in place, let’s take a look at getting this to populate without any user input.

Constructing a formula to create the mailto string:

Since the idea is to make life easier, we can use a formula field to create the HTML string automatically. Once you know which object you will build the field on, it is a matter of determining the fields you want to use to populate the output.

As previously noted, we will need an email address as well as a display name. For this example, I am going to use the contact record’s email, first name and last name.

I’ve created a new formula field on the Contact object. I started by taking the sample HTML string and pasting the string into the formula window: 

To start, the email and display name will need to be replaced with the field references. To do this, highlight the text and click insert field:

Once the fields are inserted, there are some edits we need to make to ensure it follows the formula field rules. Let’s break down the parts: 

The final step of the formula is to connect all of the parts. To do this, we will need to insert plus signs between each of the parts listed above. The formula for my example is now: 

To verify that the HTML string is correct, you can add the field to the page layout. For my test record, this appears as: 

Inserting the field into the template:

Now that the field is returning the string required, all that is left is to put the field into the template.

You will start by locating the field in the template builder. Once this is located, click the copy button and paste into your template. 

After the field is pasted into the template, the HTML prefix will need to be added:

If you merge at this point, the link will be clickable. However, the link will not be underlined and blue as expected from a typical hyperlink:

The field will need to be formatted as a hyperlink in the template to return the desired output. To do this, highlight your merge field, right click and select hyperlink:

On the left hand side of the hyperlink prompt, select Email Address. Once the email options open, click in the text area under “E-mail address.” If you press the space bar in this area, it will insert mailto text: 

There isn’t anything else that will need to be put in this section. We are using the “mailto” text as a placeholder in this case. Once you click ”OK”, your field will have the hyperlink formatting: 

Now that everything is in place, all we need to do is merge. The output after all of these steps - a clickable mailto link in your output document: 

Email links in a table:

These email links will also populate in a table. As an example, here is a table that will return a list of contacts: 

The output table will create an email link for each of the contacts: 

Quote solutions are definitely one of our most popular ways customers use Conga Composer. Quotes are also a huge time suck for many sales teams, but they don’t have to be. After my last post detailing four tips for effective account plans, I thought I’d share some strategies for creating a quoting solution that not only works, but also one that your sales team will love.

While Conga doesn’t have a sales team, our business analysts can vouch that these four strategies save time and make their job of sending quotes to prospects much easier. Before I dive in, I’m assuming for this post that we’ll generate quotes from the Opportunity object. However, all of the strategies can be implemented when creating quotes on the Quote or even custom objects.  

1. Create a One-Click Quote Solution for Sales Reps

To save time busy reps won’t bother entering data into Salesforce until they absolutely have to – many times this means they will work deals and send quotes without updating Salesforce until right before or after the deal closes. I don’t blame them. Whatever they enter in Salesforce, they’ll just have to type again in Word for a quote anyway. However, I recognize a few big problems with this logic. First, it deprives the business of vital sales forecasting data. Second, it condones performing key business processes outside of Salesforce, which leads to lower adoption rates.

Since busy reps likely already have a system they use to create quotes, we need to give them something that provides significant improvements to their day-to-day – like being able to generate a quote in seconds. Composer’s background mode enables reps to click one button in Salesforce to create and send a quote to their prospect. When it’s this easy, reps see the value in entering their opportunities earlier and taking the time to make sure the data is accurate. In addition to improved Salesforce adoption, management also gains visibility to quote generation activity. 

Here’s How:

Use the background mode parameter to instruct Composer to skip the user interface and simply generate and email the quote to the pre-defined recipient – by default this is the primary contact. If your organization does not use contact roles, you could use a custom lookup field to a Contact or Lead record with &EmailToId. Remember to also define the correct quote template and email template with &TemplateId and &CongaEmailTemplateId (&CETID for short).

&DS7= 12

Alternatively, you may opt to give the reps a chance to personalize the email message before sending the quote to the prospect. A quick change to the background mode parameter value accomplishes this.

&DS&=2

Composer also integrates with eSignature providers, and background mode can be configured to use an eSignature delivery method instead of email. Check out our documentation for all of the options available.

2.  Lock Quotes to PDF to Eliminate Errors

Salesforce gives you an incredible ability to standardize business processes and automate checks and balances. For sales teams this means standard product pricing, opportunity approval workflows, permission-based discounting and more. But what’s the point of all of these standardizations if your sales rep can just type whatever he wants into a Word-based quote before sending it to the prospect?

That’s where Conga Composer comes in – enabling reps to quickly generate a PDF quote from the opportunity record, while also giving the management team piece of mind that the quote is accurate and correct. Composer can create a PDF quote with products, pricing and terms that match the Salesforce opportunity exactly.

Here’s How:

When you want to ensure the file output is always a PDF, use the “force PDF” parameter.

&FP0=1

You could also use the default PDF parameter; however, users would have the ability to change the output back to the template’s format. Using &FP0 removes this choice for the user.   

3. Leave No Quote Behind with Automatic Follow-Up Reminders

Even with the hottest prospect, the deal can stop short due to lack of timely sales follow-up. Did the quote end up buried in the prospect’s email? Does the prospect have questions on the products quoted or need an additional quote to fine-tune the products proposed? With all that sales reps have on their daily to-do list, it’s easy to send a quote and forget to follow up with the prospect. Fortunately, Composer can help keep deals from falling through the cracks by automatically creating Salesforce follow-up tasks each time a quote is generated.

Here’s How:

Use the “activity control” parameters to create a follow-up task with a predefined owner,  dynamic subject and a due date one week in the future. I recommend incorporating the Account or Opportunity name in the subject line to make it easier for sales reps to scan their follow-up tasks. Don’t forget to turn on activity logging with &AC0.

&AC0= 1

&AC1= Follow+Up+Call-+Quote+Generated+for+{!Account.Name}

&AC3=7

By default Composer will assign follow-up tasks to the user running the Composer solution. There may be cases where the task owner should be different than the user generating quotes. For example, the sales operations team is responsible for sending quotes, but the sale rep should call to follow-up. To achieve this use an additional “log” parameter to define the Opportunity owner as the owner of the task.

&LG6={!Opportunity.OwnerId}

4. Give Your Prospects Easy to Understand Quotes

Ambiguous or confusing quotes cause unnecessary delays in the sales cycle. Sure the primary contact may understand an unsorted list of products, but will the person who will actually approve the quote understand it? Make your quotes as easy as possible to scan and approve by grouping products in a logical fashion. 

Instead of lumping all products together:

Organize products in logical groups to make it easy for the prospect to understand:

Here’s How:

To display products grouped by product family, add a row to the beginning of a table, merge all of the cells in the row and insert the Table Group merge field.

{{TABLEGROUP:OPPLINEITEMS:OPPORTUNITY_LINEITEM_PROD_FAMILY:SHOW}}

Do you have a quoting process that your sales team loves? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Get to know one of our awesome Business Analysts, Michelle!  When she’s not busy assisting customers and prospective customers or leading a Conga University (Conga U) class session, Michelle loves spending time outdoors or with her favorite tea cup!

Q: Can you describe your role and what you do at Conga?
I am one of the Business Analysts at Conga. I strive to make every customer happy and act as the first point of call for questions about our services, products and support. 

Q: What's your favorite part about working at Conga?
Every day is different. Some days I will be doing demos of our product to new prospects and others I will be working on challenging cases. This means I am constantly learning and kept on my toes.  

Q: What's the coolest solution you helped a customer build?
I would say the coolest project I have worked on is Conga U. I deliver the training for EMEA and there is nothing better than seeing your students pass with flying colours and start building their own Conga solutions. 

Q: What do you like to do when you're not at Conga?
I love everything to do with the outdoors. So gardening, walking and going on mini camping adventures.

Q: What's your favorite use case for a Conga Composer solution?
A lot of my existing customers are Non-Profits so it would have to be Conga Mail Merge for mass printing letters. It’s easy to use, fast and best of all, a free add-on which is a huge plus for charities. 

Q: Do you have any pets?
Yes, my little Tea Cup Chihuahua, Rhino! 

Q: What's something your customers would be surprised to learn about you?I love to fish and my ideal job apart from working at Conga of course, would be to work on the “Deadliest Catch” television show on a trawler boat in the Bering Sea (random I know).

Q: What's your favorite candy bar?​
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut every time. 

Conga is hiring Business Analysts and Associate Business Analysts in our UK office!  Check out our Careers page to learn more.

Greetings from a new Conganeer! Since joining the Conga team I have gained an incredible amount of knowledge about this innovative tool, and have had fun along the way. On my first day of Conga University, I was overwhelmed by how many ways there were to build Conga Composer buttons – but I am here to tell you it’s not as scary as it first seems. Despite having zero developer or coding experience, I found that the Conga parameters are indeed easy to comprehend and fascinating in how they customize and predefine certain behaviors. The quirky parameters are actually the coolest part about Conga; they give admins an incredible amount of opportunities to modify, alter and adapt their Conga solutions.

My advice? Start small. Below are the five parameters that every new Conga admin should know. Once you’ve mastered these you can explore additional ways to customize your solutions. You can find detailed information on how to use these in the Conga Composer Configuration Guide.

1. &SC1

Saving a copy of your output document is usually a smart move and can be enabled with this parameter. The available locations to store your copy are Attachments, Content, Chatter, SpringCM and Google Drive. Though a generally basic parameter, SC1 is crucial for keeping organized and authenticating the documents, presentations and reports you create. So by entering &SC1=Attachments, for example, this says “Conga, save a copy of my document in the Notes and Attachments section of the record.”

A helpful hint for us newbies: &SC1 requires &SC0. In other words &SC0=1 turns on &SC1. Make sense?

2. &OFN

Your output file should have a name, shouldn’t it? This parameter is great not only because it gives the ability to assign names, but also allows you to make the name dynamic by using merge fields. For example, the parameter value could be &OFN={!Account.Name}+Quote. What’s really cool is that you can include specific items such as “Quote” or today’s date after the name. The plus signs tell Conga to put a space in the file same. So if a user runs a Composer solution with &OFN={!Account.Name}+Quote from the ABC Corp record, the resulting file name would appear as ABC Corp Quote. Pretty neat!

3. &DS7

When you click on a Composer button, you typically land on a screen that gives you a variety of options (i.e. picking a template, enabling activity logging, previewing the document, etc.). DS7, aka “background mode”, allows you to bypass that screen. This makes the process much easier and more efficient for the end user. It’s similar to ordering a sandwich at Jimmy Johns – instead of saying “I’d like a sandwich with ham, cheese, some mayo – and oh! Could you hold the bread? I’d like it just on lettuce because I’m watching my figure,” you could simply say “I’d like the Unwich,” which is a premade, bread-free sandwich. Background mode eliminates extra steps and generates the document for end users faster. 

4. &DC

DC stands for “disable Conga.” Now, why would you want to do that? Let’s say you don’t want your users to be able to send out quotes if they gave the customer a large discount. You can use DC to tell Conga “when a user clicks the Quote button, make sure the field discount doesn’t exceed 18%. If it does exceed 18%, don’t let the user generate the quote.” If certain criteria are not met, DC allows you to automatically shut off the Conga button.

When the value of the DC parameter is 1 Composer won’t run, and when the value is 0 Composer will run. However, you wouldn’t want DC to always equal 1 because then no one would be able to use Composer.  Therefore, the value of the DC parameter is typically determined by an “IF statement” structure, meaning that whether DC equals 0 or 1 is dependent on what the IF statement returns. An example would be DC={!IF(Opportunity.StageName = "Closed Won", "0", "1") }. That parameter value is a bit frightening, so let’s break it down. In this example, if the Opportunity Stage is “Closed Won,” then DC=0, and Composer will be enabled. If the Opportunity Stage is anything other than “Closed Won,” then DC=1, and Composer will be disabled. Get it?

5. &MFTS

This parameter tells Conga to update the value of up to three fields. For example, the Opportunity record contains a field called “Stage.” MFTS allows you to say to Conga “after I click my ‘Send Quote’ Composer button, go and change the value of the “Stage” field to “Closed Unacknowledged.” This saves the end user time when updating a field because it now updates automatically. To do this you need two parameters – one to tell Composer which field to update and a second to tell Composer what the new value would be. For my example, it would look like:

&MFTS0=StageName

&MFTSValue0=Closed+Unacknowledged

You could also consider using the updated fields to activate Salesforce Workflow Rules. Pretty fancy!