I recently attended the Dreamforce event in San Francisco. While there and speaking with new/current customers... something became clear. There is an AMAZING feature that is not commonly used by our current customers. I was completely shocked when folks were so excited to hear about a feature they already have (not an add-on) they are not using that could completely remove manual tasks for their users while also keeping your Salesforce data live and accurate. This feature is called INSERT-UPDATE.
I have added a link to the setup of this feature at the bottom of this article.
"What is this feature? Why do I care?"
Great Question! Insert-Update will allow a Document Generation Package (at the beginning of creation or the end) to update your Salesforce data model. Why you care is really a creative answer. You can update ANYTHING.
You can create Tasks. So, if you have a use-case where you create proposals you can have the insert update assign a task to the current user that ran it for example and have it due 3 days after creation. See Below...
You can create chatter posts where it not only @mentions a manager but also attaches a copy of the generated document to the post for users on mobile devices.
My favorite part personally is the ability to update fields.
In the above image I have a use-case where I am running from a standard Opportunity object (FYI this works with any custom object too). In the setup I am updating the stage of the Opportunity. This is a common need and great place to start. It removes the need for users to have to remember to update the Opportunity stage before moving to the next task. Allowing them to just focus on what they are good at and not data entry.
To make things easy to digest I have only added one field update here in the above picture. BUT... If you look closely there is an "add field" link where you are not just limited to one value.
You may also notice that in the picture above there are some dynamic tags from the Drawloop field tagger being used.
Field Tagger Blog Link: https://community.nintex.com/t5/Community-Blogs/Drawloop-Field-Tagger-Basics-Tips-Tricks-amp-Relationships/ba-p/95440
Yup - you can also use dynamic values when "Insert-Updating".
Let's talk about some of the settings. Again, more detail will be shared in the help link on the bottom.
First off you can have this update fire off situationally instead of always based on a delivery option selected. This is great for times when maybe you just want to see the proposal - for example you want to generate without changing the stage of the Opportunity. In the picture above I have this setup so that it will fire in all situations. But by simply clicking other created delievery options in the list I can change that.
What if you want to use logic instead of a delivery option to fire this action? No problem.
Use-Case Idea: What if you want to track what folks are generating and get a more granular usage report of the Document Generation experience? Well if you use insert-updates you can update your data model to track this (Grab times & what Documents were generated, Delievery used, Who it went to & more). The use-cases are endless with insert-updates.
Feel free to respond to this article with any great insert-update use-cases or questions.
-Thanks for Reading!
DocGen Dave
