Drawloop Blog

We read this morning on TechCrunch that Mozilla Add-Ons hit one (1) billion in downloads. We are proud to be part of the Mozilla “Add-On Community” and continue to experience great success with our LOOP PDF add-on for Firefox.

Drawloop Add-On Rankings:
Document Category (47th out of 116)
Other Category (68th out of 695)

Our users have been able to extend Firefox to allow them to convert and combine any files to PDF without the conversion getting in the way of their web browsing. We have also experienced (about 30% of total PDF conversions) an increase in URL/web page conversions to PDF within our add-on. Users can document web pages while browsing the Internet within Firefox. All you do is click a button and the web page is converted to PDF. From there, you can download or quickly combine the web page(s) with other files into a single PDF.

Congrats Mozilla! Make it a billion + 1 and install LOOP to PDF today.

Now is a great time to implement tangible solutions to increase profitability for 2009. In the current economic environment, everyone is looking to do more with less. Document creation can be one of the more expensive and labor intensive business tasks. Sales reps and other critical team members often spend hours each day customizing the documents required to respond to customers.

Let Drawloop help you reduce costs and do more with less! We encourage you to take a look at our document automation services and add document automation as one of your priorities for 2009. Take a look at what our customers have to say.

Through December 31st, we are offering all Salesforce.com customers LOOP Merge at $0.00 per user / month in 2009. Yes, that means it’s FREE for a year! Simply have your Salesforce Administrator install now from AppExchange to take advantage of the LOOP Merge offer.

Click here to learn more about LOOP Merge.

So what are you waiting for? Install LOOP Merge today!

LOOP Document Services 3.0 went live on AppExchange today. As an active user of Salesforce, we often find ourselves looking for help within the Salesforce community or posting feature requests on the Salesforce Idea Exchange. While participating in this amazing community, we kept seeing ideas shared that related to documents (our expertise). Those ideas presented an opportunity for us to review our current document services (LOOP, LOOPlus and LOOP Reports) and see how we could incorporate real solutions to posts on Idea Exchange.

We are pleased to officially announce LOOP Merge - the answer to over thirty (30) Salesforce Ideas. LOOP Merge significantly enhances, compliments and extends the out-of-the-box Salesforce Mail Merge functionality.

Our Objectives:

Enhance the current Salesforce merge process

Improve maintenance and organization of merge templates

Support multiple browsers and operating systems

Extend merge to other applications and file types

Pricing: $4 per user/month (no minimum users)

Enhancements (11 ideas)

1. Increase File Size Limitation of 1MB: LOOP Merge allows you to upload your merge templates into the Salesforce documents tab which has a file size limit of 5MB. Like LOOPlus, you can also work with publicly accessible URL based documents which allow you to go beyond the 5MB limit if needed.
2. Date Formatting: All dates used by any of LOOP Document Service format the date using the long date format by locale.
3. Empty Fields: All fields that do not have values pass as a blank instead of “______”.
4. Ability to Select a Contact: Accounts, Cases, Opportunities and Contracts allow you to select contacts related to the object.
5. Customize the Button: You can easily deploy your own buttons and point to the LOOP Merge s-control.
6. Additional Delivery Options: You can Email, Email and Attach, Attach Only or send the Mail Merge Document to our free LOOP service where you can download or add any additional documents to the final merged PDF file.

Maintenance and Organization (7 ideas)

1. Folder Support: LOOP Merge allows you to upload your merge templates into the documents tab and store in any document folder - any security established within document folders will control access for available LOOP Merge documents.
2. Update and Tracking: Deploying templates in the documents tab also allows you to update and track templates.
3. Filter by Object: Document keyword tags allow you to limit documents by object.

Browser and OS Support (4 ideas)

1. Web Browsers: Our LOOP Document Services support Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome.
2. OS: Our LOOP Document Services support any OS that can run Firefox, IE, Safari or Chrome.

Applications and Document Types (11 ideas)

1. Additional Application Support: LOOP Merge works with Google Docs and Spreadsheets as well as OpenOffice. Although we work with the Saleforce Office Plugin, this is not a requirement for any of our services. Any document that can be saved as an Microsoft Office document can be used with our document services.
2. Additional Document Types: Works with Mail Merge Templates or any Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel (up to 2007 versions) or PDF file.

With all the discussion about cloud computing and the recent Microsoft announcement of a cloud computing platform called Azure, we thought we would take a moment to discuss the cloud and how our customers have been automating document creation in our cloud for years. All of the talk and discussion is simply validation for what we have seen for years . . . moving document creation to our cloud drives efficiencies, lowers costs and delivers scale to any business, large or small.

The past couple of weeks have been flooded with new announcements and discussions of cloud computing coming from Salesforce.com, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and posts like Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing.

So What Exactly is the Cloud?

The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet and its underlying infrastructure. Many companies, like us, have been delivering services on-demand, now often referred to as cloud-based applications, for years. So what’s new? It can get even more confusing as many people use the term cloud in different ways. For example, some define the cloud simply at the infrastructure level (like Amazon S3). Others define the cloud as web applications running in the cloud (like Salesforce.com). Regardless of the definition, buzz word or latest acronym, the value of the cloud to a business is significant and real.

Drawloop’s Cloud: Automate Your Document Creation

We offer cloud-based end-user applications to quickly automate all of your document creation. With a web browser and the same Microsoft Office documents your company has used for years, you can instantly run all of your documents in our cloud. Our document automation service allows you to move document creation from a desktop function to a web application or what we call a Dynamic Document Package (DDP). A DDP can be deployed anywhere on the web and integrated with any web service, like Salesforce.com. Our document service provides your administrators with the added benefit of working with the documents in their normal desktop environment. In other words, your legal team will still be able to update and edit your contract terms and conditions in the same Microsoft Word application they have used for years. Our approach is a unique balance between the past and the future which is critical to effectively manage all of the documents required to help sell and service your business.

What is the Business Value?

Automating document creation in our cloud will drive significant business value . . . increased productivity, increased revenue, faster sales cycle, and a significant reduction in the expenses associated with traditional document creation (man hours, software, versions, updates, networks, training and the list goes on and on). Our customers realize an immediate return on investment while reducing costs associated with document creation.

“Drawloop allowed us to dynamically package our documents to meet the needs of our unique and specific outgoing document requirements.”
AVP of Licensing Business Analysis
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

“My reps love this solution, and I love the fact that it frees-up more of their time to spend with customers rather than filling out paper work.”
Sales Manager
Dun & Bradstreet, Canada

With Drawloop, your documents become the application. Contact us today and let us help you move document creation to our cloud.

LOOPlus and DocuSign Mashup on AppExchange

We are pleased to announce our latest DDP integration partner - DocuSign. DocuSign has combined its e-signature service with our LOOPlus document creation service within Salesforce.com. A Salesforce.com user can now deliver DDPs for e-signature with enhanced features like dynamic placement of initials and signatures, powerful routing, workflow options and data capture back to Salesforce.com at the time of signature.

“The combined power of Drawloop and DocuSign on the Salesforce platform enables companies to achieve efficiencies, reduce costs and speed time to revenue like never before,” says Bob DeSantis, Vice President of Sales & Business Development at DocuSign. “Our joint solution completes the vision of straight through processing (STP) in a cloud computing environment with zero upfront capital expenditures. The combined solution enhances our customer’s ability to increase pipeline velocity, achieve greater agreement visibility throughout the sales lifecycle, and realize massive efficiencies from the reduction of paper, shipping and data entry costs. LOOPlus with DocuSign agreements will be consistent and remain digital during the entire sales process. In essence our joint customers will immediately execute leaner, greener, faster and more profitably.”

“Our partnership with Drawloop Technologies represents a very strategic relationship and tremendous value for Salesforce users,” commented Ken Cavallon, Business Development Manager, DocuSign. “Together we offer a powerful solution that provides the ability to originate, manage and complete sales contracts through a single work space, which in turn simplifies and expedites the entire contract execution process and helps businesses close deals faster, increase revenue and improve productivity.”

Please visit our LOOP Document Services on AppExchange.