How to use Conga Composer in Salesforce

Take an example a company uses Salesforce CRM in their organization where users deal with documents on day to day basis. A user has come to you with request that users should be able to generate documents automatically, currently they have been creating documents manually. How can this be done using Conga Composer?

What is Conga Composer?

Conga Composer is a third party application which allows you to create document on a standard or custom objects. Data can be retrieved from multiple salesforce objects using specially configured reports in the Salesforce. Then this data can be merged into the html templates, word and excel. You can download the conga composer app from AppExchange. Once you download the package Conga Composer app is created in app menu. To install conga composer you need to have Developer, Professional, Enterprise and Unlimited edition.

I have added Conga Composer button on Contact Page Layout.

Click Conga Composer button. Following Conga Composer page is displayed. Now let’s create a template in conga composer.

Since we don’t have templates in the Conga Composer. Create a sample template. I have taken a word file. Companies have N-number of contacts in the Salesforce. For each contact you can’t manually enter the details required on the Welcome Letter.  To automate the process we need to add merge fields on the Welcome document so the Conga Composer automatically takes the information from the Salesforce and generates the template for that respective contact. 

Go to Tools & Settings > Template Builder.

On Template Builder page we can see Master, Master – Account, Org, User and System merge fields. I want to add Email, Phone, First Name and Org Name merge fields on the Welcome word document.

To add the merge fields click Master and you view all the fields available from the Salesforce. Now I want Phone and Email. I will find these fields in the list and add the fields using the right arrow. You can see on the right side I have added Contact Phone and Contact Email with the merge field. Copy the merge field and paste it on the word document as desired.

We can see merge fields {{CONTACT_FIRSTNAME}}, {{ORG_NAME}}, {{CONTACT_PHONE}} and {{CONTACT_EMAIL}} pasted in the word document and save.

Select the Welcome Letter Template file from the local drive.

On right side of the page we have few options.

Output Options: Select Same as Template/Adobe PDF. We have selected “Same as Template” and we are using word file hence when we download the file it downloads in the word format. If we select Adobe PDF then the downloaded file will be PDF file even though we have selected word as the template file.

Action (Below Output Options): Select Download or Download and Email. Select Download to only download the file whereas when Download and Email is selected we can download and email the file.

Save a Copy: By default it is not enabled. When enabled you can save the copy on Notes & Attachments, Content, Chatter or Documents.  

Activity Logging: By default it is not enabled. It defines subject for the created activity, whether to save the text of the word file and select the date to do follow-up for the activity.

Preview: Click to preview the document.

Click Merge and Download which generates word document and all merge fields are displayed with the information taken from the respective contact record from the salesforce.