As the insanity that would be the year 2020 begins to wind down, now is a great time to reflect on all that you’ve learned this year and the work you’re especially proud of. I’ve gotten the opportunity to work on a lot of functionality and development of features this year, but for me the project that stands out the most is the configuration of a doc gen solution that involved Conga Composer and Conga Trigger. I had some previous experience with Conga Composer, but through this project, I learned more specifically about how robust Conga parameters are. Quick breakdown of how this solution works: the parameters are used to control the behavior of your doc gen solution (i.e., when and in what format your document generates and/or sends out via email) and can be built into a custom button that, when clicked, triggers generation with the parameters you’ve put in place. You can also go one step further with the use of Conga Trigger, which involves converting the custom button into a formula field, then integrating that field into a Workflow Rule and Action.
With a lengthy list of parameters to choose from it can be difficult to determine where to start. Below is a list of some of some handy parameters that can give you a good base and help you meet some of your initial business needs:
DefaultPDF – Generally speaking with Conga Composer, you have the option to export or email a document in Word or PDF format. Setting this parameter up front allows for automatic delivery in PDF format (DefaultPDF=1). You can also set the output format to be the same format as the template it’s generating from.
DS7 – With standard out of the box Conga Composer functionality, you can click a custom button that brings you to the Conga Composer user interface where you can email or generate your chosen document. With the DS7 parameter however, you can bypass any user intervention and automatically merge information from Salesforce to generate accordingly (also known as “Background Mode”). I utilized the DS7=3 parameter for my solution, which enables Background Mode and delivers the document to the browser to save or open.
Within DS7, there are several other options for delivery, including automatic attachment to an Adobe eSign Agreement (DS7=4), saving the merged copy to Google Drive (DS7=9) or automatically delivering the merged document via email (DS7=12, requires additional parameters to be functional). Of all the parameters, this is my favorite due to its sheer power.
AC Family – These specific parameters center around logging any activity associated with the solution to a Salesforce record (i.e., whenever a document is merged for generation and/or subsequently emailed out). AC0 enables automatic logging of the activity and other associated items, like the subject of the logged activity (AC1) and a task follow-up date (AC3) can be set as well.
SC0 and SC1 – Continuing with the activity logging theme, with parameters SC0 and SC1, you can activate automatic saving of a copy of the merged output file and indicate where you would like it saved (i.e., in the Notes & Attachments section or in the Chatter feed of the master object).
These are just a few of my favorites, but there are a vast number of parameters that can be used in a Conga Composer solution. For more information on Conga Parameters, feel free to have a look at the Conga Composer Parameter Guide.
Wishing you all prosperity (and parameters) in 2021!