Conga Composer: A Robust Salesforce Powered Reporting Tool

Businesses run on documents and trust. Conga Composer – a salesforce app automates the tedious business process and provides actionable insights, so that customers can focus on what matters.

Conga composer- a robust Salesforce application allows businesses to create error-free, sophisticated and template digital documents directly from Salesforce that too within seconds. This leads to increased productivity and engaged customers.

What is Conga Composer?

Conga Composer is a Salesforce app which makes it easy for Salesforce users to create sophisticated documents and reports using any data in Salesforce with only a few clicks. It can automatically populate richly-formatted templates with data from any standard or custom object in Salesforce.

By leveraging this app, organizations can allow end-users to make selections, such as which template to use for the final merged files, or can pre-select templates and other options and run the solution entirely in the background.  Its key features are:

• A separate conga license needs to be purchased for each user.
• Reports can be generated via button on page lay-out or link on the home page
• Conga reports can be created through S/F report or SQL queries
• Reports can be created in different formats:
• MS Word
• MS Excel
• MS PowerPoint
• PDF
• Email
• HTML Email

Conga Composer can be leveraged to create sophisticated and accurate digital documents using pre-built templates and populated with data from Salesforce automatically. The tool also helps organizations send consistent and personalized documents that not just promotes their brand but also delights their customers.

You can generate any document like:
✔ Quotes
✔ Proposals
✔SOW (Statement of Work)
✔ Invoices/receipts
✔ Contracts
✔ Work orders
✔ Reports & charts
✔ And more!

Why to Integrate with Salesforce?

• Composer can use data from any Salesforces’ Standard or Custom Objects or even from external database and can directly populate into your document.
• It can generate documents in multiple formats as mentioned above.
• It creates customized, personalized, and on-time reports and documents with delivery-ease for every scenario.
• It can store documents wherever you want them to be kept.
• It can easily create accurate, consistent, pixel perfect documents.
• It can automate documents, presentation and reports.
• It is lightning ready
• You can fetch almost 50 other objects, additional data in Salesforce using Salesforce reports or SOQL queries.
• Users can create documents from their browser or mobile devices.
• Conga Composer allows multiple options for downloading, storing and delivering the documents:
• Downloaded immediately
• Saves directly in Salesforce or Google drive
• Emailed automatically
• Sent for E-signature 

Technical Insights

• Conga Composer can be installed from Salesforce App Exchange but before that you need to Configure Composer as a Connected App, Enable Remote Sites, and Assign Licenses before building solutions. In order to install, you must have one of the below mentioned Salesforce editions:

Performance/Unlimited

Enterprise

Professional

Developer

• You can use Queries, as well as Salesforce reports to create the document. Conga queries contain a SOQL Select statement which is specially built to work in combination with Conga Composer and Conga Mail Merge.
• You can configure Conga Composer in a Sandbox: You can configure the SF instance so that if you later generate a Sandbox from the production, Conga automatically transfers the license information to the Sandbox. This is recommended for any organization using Sandboxes.

Note: Configuring Conga Composer Settings in a production instance will only affect new sandboxes, and does not have any influence on existing, refreshed sandboxes.

• It is lightning ready and for that we need to make sure that we are on the updated Conga version, else the Conga Composer using Salesforce reports will not work in Lightning experience. In that case we must replace Salesforce reports with Conga Queries as a data source for your Composer solutions. It is recommended that we replace all reports with queries as soon as possible.

Add-on to Composer

Apart from Composer, there are some add-on apps too using which you can extend the efficiency of Conga Composer.

Conga Batch

Conga Batch or Conductor saves your time and effort when sending out your documents. You can consolidate, schedule and deliver the documents you create. You just need to choose how you want to launch and send, whether automatically or on-demand. It can consolidate up to 50 records or files for immediate download. Then, distribute as email attachments, eSignature documents, or other common Salesforce record attachments. You can launch it from a button on a list view, page layout, or Batch record. Instead, you can schedule delivery at any interval: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. 

Conga ActionGrid

Conga ActionGrid turns reports into actionable grids so that productivity can be increased, as well as user experience and user-adoption rates can be improved. Its powerful interface enables users to understand and digest their data quickly, to filter and group, to see relationships, and to take action quickly.

• Edit fields directly in Salesforce like you would in Excel and add records without opening additional forms
• Allows more advanced filtering
• It requires additional license like conductor
• Mass update up to 50 Million rows of data
• History tracking can be enabled
• Add information in bulk; copy and paste from a spreadsheet into Conga ActionGrid
• Create user-based controls and permissions so that the security can be maintained

Conga Sign

Conga Sign is an easy-to-use, modern eSignature solution built for Salesforce. It

• creates personalized documents in Salesforce
• delivers structured, templated communication to any eSignature signer-inside or outside of Salesforce
• Automates the contract experience with timely reminders, automated eSignature 
• Tracks the status of eSignature activity

Conga Contracts

Conga Contracts streamlines and accelerates contract negotiations so that the deals can be closed faster without leaving Salesforce.

• Simplify and accelerate the entire contract lifecycle
• Streamlines and accelerates contract negotiations
• Close deals faster with automated contract creation, controlled negotiations and streamlined reporting
• Effortlessly bridge the gap between CPQ and eSignature with an end-to-end solution
• Being built on Salesforce Lightning, it allows to be business-ready quicker than most CLM (Contract Lifecycle Management) solutions in the market

Wrap-up:

Using Conga Composer, you can deliver your documents in almost any format and by any method, and store those documents anywhere you want. You can provide your teams the power to create documents and reports whenever they need. You can automate the process, schedule documents or trigger to shorten business cycles. By getting rid of all the roadblocks, you can pave way for increased business efficiency, productivity and more happy customers.

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About Author

Amit Srivastava

Amit carries a rich experience of more than 9 years working as a Salesforce business analyst/customer success manager. His excellent analytical, and logical reasoning abilities makes him extremely desirable for successful management of projects, client success management and operations management.