¶ Document Solutions
Before creating a Document Solution, let's review the concept first.
We encourage you to think of Document Solution as an IKEA Wardrobe. It is a functional and beautiful addition to your home, but before you can enjoy using it, you need to set it up from various individual pieces. We are here to guide you through the entire process so you can get the value from using the "wardrobe" as soon as possible.
So the individual pieces we have are:
- Query Builder. This is the frame of our "wardrobe". Using Query Builder you can easily get all the Salesforce data you need for your documents without a single line of code. That way the builder defines what data supports your documents the way a frame supports a wardrobe.
- Document Template. This is the facade of our "wardrobe". Document Template defines how your document will look like the way a facade defines it for a wardrobe.
- Button Configuration. This is the handle of our "wardrobe". Button Configuration defines how you will open/generate your document the way a handle helps you open a wardrobe.
Now, that you know the concept, we can start to see it in action. To show you how to generate your document using Maven Documents from start to finish, we will go into detail about creating and generating a simple quote document. So let's start!
¶ Creating a Document Solution
To create a Document Solution follow these steps:
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Open the Maven Documents App. You will be using this app through this tutorial, so you should get used to it.
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Open the Document Solutions tab.
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Click the New button to create a new Document Solution.
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The "New Document Solution" screen has Name and Description fields. We're going to name the solution "Sales Quote".
You can fill in the Description field with information about the created Document Solution if needed. We will leave that field empty for now.
Once you are done here, click Save.
The Document Solution has been created. You completed the first step towards our goal: a quote document. Next, you'll get started with Query Builder, so you can put some of the Salesforce data in the document.
¶ Template Gallery
Instead of creating your Document Solution manually, you can also choose and install already set-up Document Solutions from our Template Gallery!
- Open the Maven Documents App.
- Go to the Template Gallery tab.
There you will find previews of the available templates. You can click on the preview image to open it in the new browser tab and have a closer look at the structure of the template.
To install the solution, just click Install.
Currently, you will only find a simple Sales Quote Template in the Gallery, but stay tuned - we plan to add many more very soon. Those new ones will include templates of the most often used documents in Salesforce such as Invoices, Orders, Agreements, Proposals, Contracts, etc.
Once installed, you will find the corresponding Solution in the Document Solutions tab. The Document Solution includes Button Configuration, Actions, and the respective Document Template connected.
You can freely edit the newly installed Document Solution: add new Templates, change existing ones, add fields in the Query Builder, add new actions, etc. It is owned by the user who has installed it and it behaves the same way as if it had been manually created.
¶ Document Solution Advanced Settings component
You will find Advanced Settings as a separate tab on the Document Solution Layout. The tab holds the Advanced Settings component that will help you tweak some settings on the Document Solution manually.
The component contains several attributes that will likely grow over time:
- Enable Debug
- Use Global Variables
- Data Formatter
- Image Processing Type
¶ Enable Debug
Default value: false
The value is shown as a toggle:
- When the toggle is off, the value is False. Maven's Google service that the Maven Documents app is utilizing, is not saving any of the logs of the Document processing.
- When the toggle is on, the value is set to True. Maven's Google service will persist a debug log of the document generation process. Clients can enable it to help the Maven Documents support team debug the issue with document generation if there is one.
This attribute is mostly used by the support team, so before playing with it yourself, better contact your support agent.
¶ Use Global Variables
Default value: True
The attribute is shown as a toggle:
- When the toggle is on, the value of the attribute is True. That means Global Variables are defined in the Query Builder tab under the Query Variables section in the Maven Documents app.
- When the toggle is off, the value is False. This means Global Variables appear as mmdoc:variable element in the Template Builder and you are defining those variables on the Document Template itself.
False is the option for a legacy functionality and will be abandoned in future releases, as the desired way of defining the variables is on the Maven Documents Query Builder tab.
¶ Data Formatter
Default value: empty
The Data Formatter attribute is defined with a string value.
- The empty field for that setting means that the data from the template document is going to be formatted as usual: with spaces, new lines, etc. This leads to some additional time spent while generating the document.
- If you place any string value in the attribute's field, the data won't be formatted and that will reduce the document generation time.
Using this setting will be helpful when the generated file is going to have a lot of data and you don't want to hit the Time Out error on Salesforce. In the future, this field will help you to enable any type of custom formatting.
Be aware of some consequences of having this setting enabled:
1. Date and DateTime fields will be sent in standard ISO format. But if you still need to have a date in the specific format and the formatting turned off, then you can create a formula field on Salesforce and then use it as a merge field in the query.
2. Having a parent.child query will break the generation process. For example, the OpportunityContactRoles.Contact.Name field in the document will cause an error in the generation process. Instead, you can create the formula field on Salesforce, that will hold the data from the child field.
¶ Image Processing Type
Default value: Google App Script
This attribute is presented as a picklist with the following options:
- The Google App Script value signifies that images will be replaced in a serial way (one by one).
- The Batch value can be used if a template document includes a large number of images, probably more than 50. Selecting this value can speed up the merge process, but can also slow it down if there are only a couple of images present in the Document Template.
If you are still not sure about the purpose of any of these settings, we've added some help messages. You just need to hover over the "i" icon next to the corresponding attribute and read the appeared text.