Generating Documents in Salesforce
Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.
If your business teams have ever had to create documents manually, you know how time-consuming the process can be. Finding the correct data and transferring it into a document takes time, and if you had to try to speed up the data entry process, your documents might end up with a few typos, missing data, or even copy-pasting errors.
Using Salesforce to generate documents can transform creating manual documents into an automated work process, saving your staff time and providing consistency across all your documents.
Managing and Storing Documents in Salesforce
With Salesforce, the world’s number 1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform, you can access and work with your documents and files in one convenient place online.
So, what are the options you get for working with files? In Salesforce, you can empower your staff to store, collaborate, and share documents that they work with on a daily basis. Let’s take a deeper dive into Salesforce’s capabilities to manage documents.
Attach Your Documents to Salesforce Records
Your employees can attach documents directly to Salesforce records. These records could be leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, or even custom objects. You can also go ahead and attach images, presentations, or spreadsheets to records, not just documents. It’s important to remember that Salesforce record attachments are best suited for smaller file sizes due to their size limit requirements.
Document Management System in Salesforce | Salesforce Files
Salesforce provides your teams with an organized document management system called Salesforce Files. With Salesforce File management, your teams can store and work with their business documents in an orderly manner. Typically, with Salesforce Files, files are arranged in libraries. For example, you can set up your libraries into categories to store your files under teams, projects, or departments.
The best part about Salesforce Files is that your teams get version control for their files and documents. Version control helps your employees view any changes that were committed to files which improves collaboration on documents and overall projects.
Salesforce Feature | Chatter
Salesforce offers a feature called Chatter that your team members can use to chat and work together on records and documents. It’s a helpful collaboration feature as it allows employees to comment on files, provide feedback, and also @mention to add colleagues to a discussion for extra support.
Content Management System | Salesforce Content
With Salesforce, you gain access to managing your content better with Salesforce Content. This system helps your teams work with their content and distribute them so they are ready to be shared with relevant stakeholders. Many organizations use Salesforce content to manage and share their documents, presentations, and images with Salesforce and external users.
Since Salesforce Content allows users to manage content, they also provide versioning features to track essential file changes. Other solid features provided by Salesforce Content include tools for approving workflows and controlling user access to content.
Integration with Cloud Storage
What else do you need to work smarter with documents? Cloud storage sounds like a great feature to add to the mix. Salesforce gives you the option to integrate your CRM platform with other big players in the cloud storage industry, which include Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. With a Salesforce and cloud storage platform integration, your teams can access files and documents stored in your external cloud storage platform of choice but from directly within Salesforce.
These are just a few Salesforce file storage features that you can take advantage of when you choose to manage your documents! If you need more document management solutions, feel free to reach out to Titan for expert advice.
Creating Word Templates for Salesforce
Your business can create Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and other Salesforce document templates with OmniStudio Document Creation Salesforce. Whether your teams need to make simple or complex templates for their specific projects, they can achieve these tasks seamlessly with OmniStudio Document Generation to be prepped and ready for document generation.
OmniStudio Document Generation solution in Salesforce can help you add standard, conditional, and dynamic elements to your templates. You want to add these elements to your template so that when a document is generated, it will populate content and save you from any manual data entry or editing.
Many companies also choose to add standard content, tokens, and display conditions with OmniStudio Document Generation in their templates. For example, a sales representative can create a template for a customer quote with standard elements, which include a company name and contact details. They can also add dynamic elements to the customer quote template, such as a product or service and prices for these chosen offerings. The sales representative might even need to configure sections so that they are only visible under specific conditions.
Take a look at the screenshots below for examples of a Quote Template:
When you have designed your Microsoft Word or PowerPoint template, you can upload it to the Document Template Designer in Salesforce to provide the metadata for your template. Follow the below steps to implement the process on your end.
Your new template is now ready for use in Word document generation. Test it out 
Salesforce Document Generation | Word Templates
Instead of creating your Word documents manually by entering data like names, dates, and other important information repeatedly, you can use OmniStudio Document Generation from Salesforce to automate the manual processes. This Salesforce tool can merge your Microsoft Word or PowerPoint templates with data to generate new documents on-demand and in batches.
We have already covered how to create a Microsoft Word template earlier. So, to continue the automated work process by generating a document from this template and exporting it as a .docx, .pptx, or .pdf file, follow the below steps.
FAQ
Can Salesforce generate documents?
Yes. You can generate various documents for your business directly from Salesforce.
Can Salesforce generate a Word document?
Yes. There are many ways to generate a Microsoft Word document from Salesforce. Try OmniStudio Document Generation or Titan as a third-party platform found on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Are documents available in Salesforce lightning?
Unfortunately, documents are not available in Lightning Experience. If you need copies in Lightning Experience, upload them into the CRM with Salesforce Files.
How are documents generated in Salesforce?
Documents are generated in Salesforce through various methods, including using Salesforce’s built-in features or integrating with external applications.
Titan Docs: Document Generation Software in Salesforce
We hope you enjoyed our article on creating documents in Salesforce and generating Salesforce documents. If you are looking to transform your business by extending Salesforce solutions, reach out to us.
Titan gives you the power to build custom dynamic documents from Salesforce for document generation processes. We provide a no-code approach to creating templates and generating documents with a powerful drag-and-drop builder for all your Salesforce Doc Gen requirements.
Sounds interesting?
Contact us for more information.
Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us.
