Conga Composer - Building a Solution
- AlphaSys
Conga Composer is a tool for creating prepopulated templates in Salesforce. You can easily create merge documents using the built in template builder. Once created, you can attach these merge documents to a Conga Solution which allows for a fully automated process.
Basic Setup
Salesforce Settings
Solutions
Conga does not just build templates. You actually build a whole automated solution.
Example Requirement: Donation Receipt Button on the opportunity object.
Name: Donation Letter
Master Object: Opportunity
This takes you to the next step of building the solution. What you are doing in this step is adding functions that are performed when you click the button.
The key purpose of your solution is to populate a template. Therefore, you must first create your initial template using the template builder.
Access a sample record to populate data in the template builder, and then click ‘Access Template Builder’.
Conga Composer opens in a new window where you can navigate to the template builder.
Conga accesses the fields on your object in Salesforce, and generates merge fields that can be copied straight into a Word document.
You can type the field name directly in the Filter field or click the plus sign to view the fields.
Click on a field and then click the arrow to add it to the template region on the right. From here, you can copy and paste the field into Word, or you can click the copy sign beside the field and past directly into Word.
Click the arrow to choose whether or not to include the label with ‘toggle label’.
Copy and paste into your template.
Adding related object fields using reports
Additional fields not on the object but on a related object can be brought into the template builder using reports. For example, whether a donation is tax deductible or not can be specified in Salesforce via the General Accounting Unit (GAU) object. Therefore, you need to generate a report that filters by opportunity and GAU.
Add this report to your Conga Solution.
Select your report, name it and give it an alias. The alias is how it will appear in the template builder.
For example, the below report has the alias TD.
You can pass parameters into your report using the advanced filter configuration. In this case, the report filters by Opportunity Name, so we need to pass in this field as a parameter when the report is run in the solution.
Add the report to the solution.
Open template builder again where you will find that there is now a new set of fields available to add to your merge template.
The TableStart and TableEnd fields specify that these are dynamic fields.
In this example, the donation has been allocated to multiple GAUs. The table below has populated each allocation.
You can also add formulas to your template so that a table is only displayed if values exist.
In the example below, we only want to show the table if there are tax-deductible donations. Use the TableHide function to specify.
Add Template to Conga Composer
Once you have finished building your template, add it to Conga templates.
Click ‘New’.
Name your template and click ‘Save’. This creates an object within Salesforce that will hold your template.
Attach your Word template as a file to the template object you have just created.
Select the relevant file from your computer and click ‘Done’.
In the Conga Solution, add this template to the solution.
Select the template you want, and add to the solution record.
Once added, the template will display on your list of templates in the Conga Composer window.
Email Templates
Email templates can be added to your solution in a similar fashion to the above.
Enhancing your solution using parameters
Parameters enhance the solution by adding further automations to what happens when you click the solution button.
The full list of parameters, along with an explanation of their functionality, are located here:
An example of a finished solution with parameters is below.
Finished Product
Here is an example of a final solution.
The button will open the Conga Composer window.
Click ‘Merge and Email’ to view an email preview.
Click ‘Send’ and your work is done!
You can also see that the activity was logged on the opportunity record and the receipt was saved as an attachment.