Quote Documents vs Conga Quote Generation


I’m fortunate to have been in the Salesforce ecosystem for a LONG time. And so my exposure to tools like Conga and Drawloop for document creation is fairly routine. A typical Salesforce admin has some experience with these tools and what they can and more importantly what they cannot do easily.

So when I moved to spend more time on CPQ and less on Sales Cloud, I was challenged by Quote Documents. It is not the same experience. And now with CPQ, there is Conga Quote Generation which is a simplified version that solves many of the challenges. And if you are already familiar with Conga then then barrier to entry is easier since you are not learning a new tool:

Quote Documents:

  • HTML-heavy
  • Uses Salesforce records to determine what is shown on the page and in what order
  • Typically requires lots of checkbox fields and a few price rules to create the dynamic features of a Document
  • If you want to use Quote Terms, you MUST use Quote Documents

Conga Quote Generation

  • Has many of the features of the “Full-flavored” version of Conga but not all
  • Uses a word template and tags in Word to control the dynamic features of a document
  • An admin must create the necessary actions in Salesforce to create the document (CPQ’s “Generate Document” button is useless here)
  • Conga Queries are typically used to gather the necessary information to show on the page
  • Quote Terms is NOT available in Conga. We asked.

It is important to recognize that Conga does NOT directly support this tool. As an admin you must log cases with Salesforce for any issues or questions. While Conga’s help system is good for usage questions, Conga Quote Generation is run by Salesforce.

In fact Conga shows this chart (as of late 2019) that dictates the difference between Conga Quote Generation (on the left) versus Conga Document Generation

If your organization is new to CPQ and already has experience with Conga then it may be a good alternative and you can install the app through the AppExchange here. (yes I know this page will take you to Conga, trust me this is a good thing)

However, Quote Documents has a place. Having HTML-level control of a document and all those dynamic content features controlled by a checkbox field may give you as a builder more control over what is shown to a customer. We’ve also discovered along the way that a single Quote Document can appear wildly different due to these content pieces and so the number of documents that need selected and maintained is reduced. For us it has always been the language selected that dictated a unique template and that is just how life goes.

So if you are a Conga Champion, it may be worth a brief exploration of Quote Documents before you go back to what is familiar based on your document needs.


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