Automate Processes and Collaborate on Unstructured Data with Quip

Are your users emailing documents and spreadsheets to each other for review and collaboration as part of the business processes they already follow in Salesforce? This is a fairly common problem and it can be a huge challenge for architects trying to help their organizations manage their data more effectively.

Unstructured data is sometimes a necessity, but allowing users to store it in manually created documents inevitably leads to the loss of critical information. Even if you create templates to increase consistency, it can be difficult to enforce their usage among users. Users may also forget to associate the files they create with the appropriate Salesforce records, leading to frantic searches through old emails and shared folders during customer interactions. Or worse, team members may be unaware that documents containing critical information about their customers exist at all.

Two of the most common workarounds for unstructured data include using rich text areas on records or the Notes object. These workarounds are not ideal because they lack the collaboration features that make managing unstructured data more efficient. Fortunately, you can get the best of both worlds with Quip. Quip enables you to store your unstructured data in a manageable way, while also enabling collaboration across teams. This post covers steps to automate your business processes around document creation and collaboration and also discusses how you can use data within documents that already exist in your Salesforce organization, how to collaborate with Quip across multiple Salesforce organizations, and how to use live apps to visualize data in different ways.

Start with a plan

Having a good data governance strategy in place is imperative to ensuring the success of any data related initiative. Before building any automations, make sure that all of the stakeholders across your organization are aligned on what data is okay to store in documents outside of Salesforce, how that data will be used, who should be able to access it, and what type of access they should have. Also, since we’re going to be discussing the steps to automatically create Quip documents, you’ll want to make sure to get alignment on naming conventions and the layouts of any templates you’d like to use as well as the criteria that should trigger any document or related actions.

Automate within your business processes

Through the use of automations like the one described below, you can ensure that any documents your users create will consistently use the same templates. You can also automatically link documents to the appropriate records in Salesforce, which ensures that any users who need visibility to them can find them without a lengthy search effort.

In a nonprofit example scenario, let’s say that your organization wants to generate a proposal document when a grant opportunity hits a specific stage. You can use the following steps to automate this process:

1. Create a Proposal template in Quip formatted with the default information you want to include.
2. Add the Quip Document component to the Lightning page on your related record, which in this scenario is the grant opportunity record.
3. Create a record-triggered flow that does the following:

• Runs based on the stage change for your grant opportunity. You can also include in the criteria that the document URL field, which is required for the Quip document to be linked to is null. This would ensure that if a user wanted to get a head start on the document, they could have done so manually and you don’t want to overwrite what they started.
• Copies the proposal template you previously created and associates it with the grant opportunity record (“Copy Quip Document“ core action).

If you want, you can build this automation out further by adding additional actions to your flow that automatically lock a copy of the document from being edited or create a PDF version of the document and attach it to the record based on other actions, such as an approval process being completed.

Note that Quip actions can only be run in flows by users who are Quip users, so it’s a good idea to also include a check on the running user within the flow (with the $User global variable) to validate they have the necessary Quip permissions prior to invoking any Quip actions. Data from related records or details about a user can also be accessed through standard flow elements to determine which template should be added to the record.

Use data that already exists

The beauty of Quip is that Salesforce data can easily be brought into documents in a variety of ways to meet requirements. Are your users creating a proposal that needs to have details from fields on an account and opportunity brought in? Use merge fields in a template so they’ll be automatically populated when a new document from a template is created. Be aware that merge fields should be used in conjunction with the Quip Document component on a record, can only support merging fields on the object and lookup fields up one level, and are static, meaning that they will not update if the data is updated on the record.

If your team needs data in a Quip document to stay in sync with a Salesforce record, use data mentions to display a field’s value in the document. Let’s say your team generates a program brief that you want to provide to external stakeholders or executives. While the document itself may be relatively static, you want to ensure that details provided in it are up to date; for example, you’d like to include the projected end date of the program, a description, and the contact information for the program manager. You can use data mentions within that program brief Quip document to ensure that if the data is updated in Salesforce (for example, when a new program manager is assigned or the projected end date is updated), it will be automatically updated within the document as well without any action from the user. With this approach, users no longer need to worry about updating information in multiple locations.

Another way to incorporate Salesforce data is through embedding a report within a Quip document. In a nonprofit use case, teams may create executive briefings before major donor meetings. These teams can use a Quip template with a Salesforce report embedded in it that is dynamically filtered based on the record on which it is embedded to include a snapshot of committed donations or recent awarded donations in the briefing.

Other options for incorporating Salesforce data include using the Salesforce List live app or embedding Tableau CRM dashboards. With the Salesforce List live app you can choose if you want to use a related list from the specific record the document is associated with or a list view from a general object. Tableau CRM dashboards can be embedded with live data within a document for easy reference. You can even set up your list in Template Mode to have the list automatically filter by the Salesforce record the document is embedded on.

Use in a multi-org environment

If your environment has multiple Salesforce organizations, you can easily connect Quip to each of them, enabling users who may not have access to all organizations to collaborate with each other when needed. For example, consider a global company with Salesforce organizations divided up by region. More than likely, users will only need access to the organization that’s associated to the region they’re in, and this may be sufficient for their interactions with the majority of their customers. However, the company may have some customers that are also global organizations with offices in multiple regions, requiring users across the globe to collaborate on account plans.

In a scenario like this, you can follow the steps below to add the appropriate Salesforce organizations to the allowlist, giving your users the ability to collaborate within the same Quip document.

1. Login to the Quip Admin Console and access Settings > Salesforce.
2. Enable “Control Access to Your Salesforce Orgs” to limit the specific organizations that can be connected.
3. Add Salesforce organizations that should be included in your site.

If users have access to multiple Salesforce instances they can choose which organization they want to pull data in from within their documents.

Use live apps

Live apps in Quip extend capabilities for how users can use different visualizations within their documents. Live apps that use Salesforce data are available immediately within Quip via Insert: Live App, however additional ones can be downloaded from AppExchange.

For example, maybe your teams want to visualize influential relationships they have with contacts within an organization. Rather than coding a Lightning component visualization, you can use the standard Quip Relationship Map live app to import Salesforce contacts then drag and adjust the visualization for known relationships within a hierarchy. Embed the document on the relevant records and teams can easily visualize how a contact may influence others.

Another visualization option is the Lucidchart live app, which enables users to create custom diagrams within a document. These documents can also be embedded within Salesforce records and the Lucidchart diagrams can be edited directly from within the document. For example, you can include a process flow diagram in a document for marketing campaign preparations to ensure teams understand (and are aligned on) the process to launch a campaign.

Conclusion

If teams you support have struggled with unstructured data that exists outside Salesforce or is stored manually in fields that you can’t easily monitor or manage, it’s time to consider new solutions to drive efficiencies and standardization. Incorporating Quip documents and collaboration into daily business processes can also be a game-changer for broader adoption of your Salesforce implementation by enabling users to complete those processes entirely within Salesforce.

Check out the following resources to learn more:

• AppExchange Quip live apps
• Use Quip help documentation
• Quip Automation help documentation