With LOOP Document Services, you can leverage Excel as middleware to run dynamic calculations at run time. Picture an Excel file that gives you a series of calculated numbers (or text values) in cells B20, C20 and D20. You can have the calculated numbers dynamically merged from cells B20, C20 and D20 in your Excel file to a Quote summary (.doc or .ppt) file.

Some examples include:

1) Use Excel for Internal Pricing Calcs

Perhaps you need to run a DDP for internal purposes that provides management with profit margins and other internal pricing metrics based on Sales Quotes generated by all of the sales reps. All of the confidential pricing metrics are calculated in an Excel file at DDP run time (never exposed to anyone) and merged to an internal Pricing Summary for management.

2) Use Excel for Complicated Formulas

A financial institution provides DDPs to financial service representatives to run analytics for customers. The financial institution uses a combination of Salesforce values and Excel calculations to generate the Customer Profile Summary. The Excel file contains calculations and metrics to take in assumption data from Salesforce and then run all of the required calculations in Excel.

Please contact us today to schedule a time to learn more about how your organization can leverage our document service using Excel as middleware.

Business Requirement:

Dave needed to dynamically create his “Weekly Deal Summary” spreadsheet using data from Salesforce.com for all of the stakeholders at Austin Ventures. Many of the stakeholders are mobile and need to access the Weekly Deal Summary from a mobile device (smart phone / iPad). In order to track the history and provide easy “download and view” capabilities, Dave wanted to have the spreadsheet stored on Salesforce and on Box.net.

Solution:

Dave created “Send to Box Folder” as a new DDP Delivery Option.

By leveraging our “Send to Box” integration for DDPs within Salesforce, Dave was able to automate (i) the dynamic creation of his Weekly Deal Summary and (ii) the automatic storage of the document on Box.net where all of the stakeholders can view the document at anytime.

Nice work Dave and a very creative new use case for our Box integration within Salesforce!

Administrative Steps to Create “Send to Box Folder”:

DDP Steps:

1) Add a New Delivery Option

Select “Email” delivery option and name it “Send to Box Folder”

2) Check to email the DDP to “Internal Email” which will enable the DDP creation via Salesforce email without the need for a Contact at run time (you can run from a button click or Salesforce workflow)

3) Copy and paste the Box Folder email address into the “Additional To” field

Box Steps:

1) Create a new Box folder or go to an existing Folder

2) Click Folder Options and select “Folder Properties | Advanced Properties”

3) Click on “Email Options” and the select “Allow uploads to this folder via email”

Now, you are ready to get the unique Box Folder email address. To get the address, go to “Folder Properties” and then select the “General” tab. You will see the Folder Email Address at the bottom.

Contact us to learn more about our document merge and creation services within Salesforce as well as how to extend DDP delivery to Box.

When we change . . . they change with us!
by Douglas Fullaway
“The Drawloop offerings have made it easy to generate orders and update our records. We have a complicated set of computations that need to be done and every customer is slightly different. When we had to change our prices, processes and computations they made life simple for us. You will find a great “can do” attitude with everyone at Drawloop.”

Take a moment to explore what’s possible with Drawloop on Salesforce!

If you are like our customers, you probably have a lot of time, intellectual capital and critical business rules living inside various Excel files. As more companies move to the cloud, the business intelligence wrapped up in Excel can present a huge problem.

• Do you build a custom program to replace the Excel calculations?
• Do you replace business flexibility from your analyst using Excel with a structured program that now requires programmers to make all of your business changes?
• Does it make sense, or more likely, it is possible to replicate what you have been doing in Excel in a cloud application or service?

At Drawloop, we recognize the value and power Excel provides virtually every business in the world. There is a real business need to keep your business analyst in charge rather than moving that role to programmers. Our document merge and automation service allows you to use your Excel files within any dynamic document package (DDP). Using Excel within a DDP allows your company to use Excel with other cloud services like Salesforce.com and Google Apps.

Here’s how you can use Excel with Drawloop:

1) Merge Data to Excel and include Output Sheets

Allows you to use Excel to (a) dynamically merge data from your CRM and/or web form and (b) present the desired output page(s) from Excel as a PDF with any other combination of documents. This gives you a secure process for creating your DDPs without exposing the Excel file(s) to the end user.

2) Use Excel as a Calc Engine

Allows you to use Excel as a calc engine to calculate the required “values” and then pass those values dynamically into your Word and/or PowerPoint documents. For example, you can merge data from Salesforce to Excel, run your amortization calculations, and then dynamically pass values from Excel into Word and/or PowerPoint. Powerful stuff!

Please contact us to learn how to use Excel in the Cloud!