You can complement the benefits of Salesforce by introducing document generation that enables you to generate documents in a rich format. With document generation in Salesforce, you can use templates to create HTML or PDF documents.
For a first-timer, it may be a bit confusing on how to achieve the best results by using a document generation tool. This guide will enlighten and prepare you to reap the benefits of document generation combined with Salesforce.
As the name suggests, the document generation software is used to create documents. What makes it unique is that it automates the process of creating documents by integrating it into your Salesforce application. You can pull relevant data from different sources and insert into a template. You can produce different documents through Salesforce, for example, a pricing quote, invoice, or a detailed sales report.
With this, you can create documents in half or even less than half of the time it would take you by collecting the data and then manually entering it into a document. Furthermore, human error is eliminated from this process and the data is usually up to date.
An important consideration for the success of Salesforce integration is the template compatibility. The template needs to be accessible to everyone who is involved in the generation of documents. It is, therefore, necessary to have a template that can run on Windows as well as Mac computers and any other devices that may be used for document creation. Many organizations choose to have an online template in HTML that can be compatible with all devices.
Remember that document generation is supposed to speed up the process of creating a document, so it is important that editing is super-fast and easy. Having the option to just drag and drop into the template will make it easier to edit your Salesforce document. You do not want to be stuck trying to alter the settings in Salesforce as a client waits impatiently on the other end.
Automation is just about for any industry that cuts out a lot of time spent performing repetitive actions. It is amazing how much can be achieved by implementing automation into most of the document generation process. Some of the processes that can be automated include:
On paper, some of these processes may seem complicated and intimidating, but when you get down to using the document generation tool, it will become second nature.
Choosing the right document generation software needs to be a careful process based on the requirements of your organization. Some software does a better job than others, so you want to ensure you get a document generator that produces quality documents that suit your standard expectations.
For instance, Windward can handle complicated requirements of a Salesforce document. It can be used to compile a list of different products for performance comparison taking into account different variables. What may seem very complicated can be simplified using Windward.
Getting started with document generation is a simple process. You can download Windward for a trial and even contact support to walk you through.
You would need to start by creating a template. It is advised that you use the sample templates provided in the software, but go ahead and modify them to suit your particular need and represent your brand. When you are satisfied with the appearance of the template, then the rest of the process will be easy. The document generation tool can populate the template with relevant data from the different sources you have authorized it to access data.
Now, let’s take a look at a few advantages of automating Salesforce native document generation:
When you do it manually, every stage of the document generation process requires the involvement of a human being, which means organizations allocate human resources to take part in creating a document. With automation, however, most of the processes are handled by the software so the employee is free to attend to more crucial business tasks that actually need human involvement. This will also reduce the expense that comes with having labor-intensive processes.
By reducing the number of people who handle documents, you can ensure stricter confidentiality. Many organizations have documents that may be considered confidential. It could be price quotes, customer personal information, and contracts. Such data will remain only in the possession of those that are authorized to handle the Salesforce and the document generation software will be responsible for retrieving the data so that the right people will be able to look at them and the business can guarantee confidentiality.
For a big company with several people generating documents manually, it can be hard to ensure that everyone sticks to the branding guidelines of the organization. However, with the right Salesforce document generation tools, that would not be a problem. Fields like company logo, address, and text formatting will be pre-set so that even if a thousand people printed letters for the company, they would all come out using the same format. The company will have an approved template that everyone can use, giving more control over the documents the company shares with clients and any stakeholder.
Automation will ensure the data used in the documents is retrieved directly from Salesforce and this will restrict other sources of data that has not been verified and approved. The organization will see fewer cases of staff using inaccurate data or conflicting data. The best Salesforce document generation software also reduces errors in entering data. With humans, it is possible that their state of mind can cause them to enter the wrong data while the software, on the other hand, is consistent and accurate.
There are a lot of tasks that need to be performed over and over again, like a tedious copy/paste project. When you entrust a document generation tool to do that, it is never a problem. Document automation is a process that can be repeated as many times as possible and the software will never get bored or tired. This means even more documents can be generated in a short time and that enables the workflow to go faster and smoother.
The manual process usually creates wastage since a number of documents need to be generated in order to come up with the final document. For example, you may need to come up with a number of drafts before you generate the final contract for a business, but with the Salesforce CPQ document generation software, all the other documents are unnecessary since a standard template is used and the information in the document is already stored in Salesforce.
With automation, there is not a lot for a new employee to remember. More than half of the document requirement is in the template and the data is stored in Salesforce. In a matter of hours, they should be able to generate documents that are to the standard of the organization.
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Adds various capabilities such as inequalities,descending sort, joins, and other functions.
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SQL Select Debugger
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Added a Query tab as a field for typing or pasting in a select statement
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All tags using that Data source will be automatically updated with that name.
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New single interface to replace 2 separate dialog boxes
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Displays of all the tags in the template, structured as they are placed in the template. This provides a simple & intuitive way to see the structure of your template. Also provides the capability to go to any tag and/or see the properties of any tag.
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The ability to integrate the Windward Engine into Google’s cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications dubbed Google Applications Engine (GAE).
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If you've just discovered us, we're excited. Learn more about Windward document automation software now.
Try Windward with our 30-day free trial and start creating documents in quick time with our low/no code solutions.
This new integration will allow for processing of complex scripts and bi-directional text such as Arabic. Your PDF output will be much tighter and more closely match your template, and we’ll be able to respond rapidly to PDF requests and fixes.
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Includes support for new ForEach and slide break handling, table header row repeat across slide breaks, and native Microsoft support for charts and images.
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Tags are color coded in the template by type, making it easy to visually identify them.
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Version 13’s core code has been reworked and optimized to offer a reduced memory footprint, faster PDF generation and full documentation of supported features and limitations in the specifications for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX.
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Documents can include advanced Word image properties such as shadows, borders, and styles.
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Windward has updated HTML output to reflect changing HTML standards.
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Windward now works with a slew of new datasources: MongoDB, JSON, Cassandra, OData, Salesforce.com
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The Generate Code tool in the designer allows you to open an existing template and, with a click of a button, automatically create a window with the code needed to run your current template with all data sources and variables. Simply copy this code and paste into your application's code in the appropriate place. You now have Windward integrated into your application.
You only need to do this once. You do not do this for each template. Instead, where it has explicit files for the template and output, change that to parameters you pass to this code. Same for the parameters passed to Windward. This example uses explicit values to show you what to substitute in where.
Any pivot tables in an XLSX template are carried over to the XLSX output. The ranges in the pivot ranges are adjusted to match the generated output. So your final XLSX will have pivot tables set as expected in the generated file.
This makes creating an XLSX workbook with pivot tables trivial.
In an imported sub-template, if its properties for a style (ex. Normal) differ from the parent template's properties for the style, the use in the sub-template can be set to either use the properties in the sub-template, or the properties in the parent.
You set to retain when you don't want the child template's styling to change when imported. You set to use the parent when you want the styling of the imported template to match the styling in the parent.
Any explicit styling is always retained. This only impacts styling set by styles.
Tags can be placed in text boxes. Including linked text boxes. This gives you the ability to set the text in a textbox from your data.
Tags can be placed in shapes & smart art. This gives you the ability to set the text in a shape from your data.
When generating HTML output, the engine can either write bitmaps as distinct files the generate HTML references, or it can embed the images in the HTML providing a single file for the output.
You can place tags in pretty much any part of a template, including in footnotes & endnotes.
Any parts of a DOCX or XLSX (PowerPoint does not support this) file that are locked in the template, will be locked the same in the output.
If a font used in the template does not exist on the server generating a report, the font to substitute can be specified.
In addition, if a glyph to be rendered does not exist in the font specified, you can specify the replacement font. This can be set distinctly for European, Bi-Directional, and Far East fonts.
If you need this - it's essential. And if you don't need it, it's irrelevant.
Windward enables you to build a document by applying multiple datasources to the template simultaneously. When Windward is merging the data into a template, it processes the template by handling each tag in order, and each tag pulls from different datasources. (As opposed to processing all of one datasource, then processing the next.)
This allows the select tag to use data from another datasource in its select. For example, if you are pulling customer information from one data source, you can then pull data from the sales datasource using the customer ID of the customer presently processing to pull the sales information for that customer. If you're interested in patching together your data from multiple datasources, read this post on our blog.
