Drawloop Blog

The Summer release of our LOOP Document Services for Salesforce is now available on the AppExchange to allow any of your users to test the latest version of LOOPlus. The Summer release includes exciting and powerful new features like Visualforce pages in DDPs, out-of-the-box Real-Time Quotes integration, and significant performance enhancements.

HIGHLIGHTS

1) Visualforce Pages

Now, you can treat any visualforce page as a document or section in your DDP. This allows your organization to include a cover letter, sales quote or sales contract with your visualforce pages. Because we treat a visualforce page just like any other document, you can leverage all of the business logic and intelligence available to any dynamic document package (DDP).

2) Real-Time Quotes

Real-time quotes provides an easy way for your Salesforce users to generate quotes for customers. Our new DDP integration with Real-Time Quotes allows you to expand this functionality to include additional elements which are often part of a sales quote – things like a cover letter, a product exhibit, terms & conditions. Again, this combines the power of Salesforce with the power of real-time document packaging.

In addition to integrating with the real-time quote PDFs, we also allow you to include Quote and Quote Line Item data in any DDP merge files (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).

3) UI for Advanced DDP Logic

We have created a point-and-click interface to relate multiple object relationships to a DDP. This includes any one-to-many object relationship or look-up to an object. This new UI has a familiar interface to filter and sort on those related objects. This delivers the best of DDPs with Salesforce filtering while keeping the simplicity of document tagging.

4) DDP Routing Options

We have expanded DDP routing options allowing our customers to not only dynamically create the document packages required to sell and service their products, but equally important, deliver their DDPs based on required business rules. DDPs can be routed as follows:

- Email
- 3rd Party SMTP service
- Any external web form (web service)
- Outbound messaging
- Work flows (like approvals)
- Scheduled reports (e.g. every Monday at 8:00am)
- Document storage (Amazon S3)
- Electronic Signature (DocuSign)
- Document Queue (for 3rd party fulfillment)
- LOOP (DDP output with ad hoc files)
- Download
- Attach as attachment, activity history, LOOP Storage

5) Performance Enhancements

Our development team has been working hard to improve the DDP user experience. We are pleased to pass along these improvements with our Summer release. With some changes and enhancements to our document merge and packaging service, our pre-release tests show a 20% to 50% improvement in performance.

Please contact us with any questions or if you need assistance from support to test the pre-release.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks since we got back from Google I/O. While at the conference, we had the opportunity to talk to developers both from Google and from other companies, and received quite a bit of good feedback. We’ve spent the last couple weeks starting plans to incorporate that feedback and finalize the next phase of our product road map.

The conference itself was a great experience. Talking to developers and seeing what’s coming down the line for businesses helped a lot with focusing our own ideas. We also enjoyed meeting Google Apps integrators. It was encouraging to receive confirmation that the direction we’ve been moving for our cloud-based document merge and automation service is exactly in the right direction.

I’m also enjoying the free Evo 4G we all were given a couple weeks early! Thanks Google!

Please stop by our booth at Google I/O and learn more about how you can automate document create and deliver mail merge in the cloud with Google Docs. Visit us in the Enterprise Developer Sandbox (# 4 – Enterprise Sandbox). You can meet some of our team, run a DDP and even redeem a Coupon. Learn how to dynamically create documents in the cloud . . . all from within Google Apps.

Developer Sandbox @ Google I/O

The Developer Sandbox, first introduced at I/O 2009, is the demo area at Google I/O where Google features a wide range of developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at I/O.

Representing large and small companies, individual developers, and a diverse collection of apps, these developers will be participating in the Sandbox to demo their applications, answer questions, and exchange ideas.

Our team has just added yet another cloud delivery option for our document merge service on Google Apps, send to box.net. Our seamless document merge service for Google Docs within Google Apps allows your sales and service reps to create customized documents and mail merge in the cloud.

Our latest DDP delivery option provides a simple and easy way for users to work with Drawloop, Box and Google Apps.

Learn more about our latest integration on Google Apps with Box.net at Google I/O – visit us in the Enterprise Developer Sandbox (# 4 – Enterprise Sandbox). You can run a DDP and redeem a Coupon at Box.net (# 1 – Google APIs Sandbox). Learn how to dynamically create documents in the cloud and send the output to Box.net . . . all from within Google Apps.

Developer Sandbox @ Google I/O

The Developer Sandbox, first introduced at I/O 2009, is the demo area at Google I/O where Google features a wide range of developers who have built applications based on technologies and products featured at I/O.

Representing large and small companies, individual developers, and a diverse collection of apps, these developers will be participating in the Sandbox to demo their applications, answer questions, and exchange ideas.

westbrook International, our EMEA partner, has put together a nice demo reviewing some of their customer implementations leveraging our document merge and automation service within Salesforce.

Watch Now

The integrations highlight westbrook’s knowledge of our document services to leverage efficiency and functionality within Salesforce.

westbrook provides the business expertise and technical knowledge to implement document automation solutions to guarantee time and cost savings. Thanks westbrook for the great work! You can learn more about westbrook International by visiting their website at http://www.wigroup.com.

Our team is excited to announce a new DDP (“Dynamic Document Package”) delivery option for Google Apps – “View/Email”. Our seamless document merge service for Google Docs within Google Apps allows your sales and service reps to create customized documents and mail merge in the cloud.

DDP Delivery Options

You can deliver the DDP output as (i) Download, (ii) Original merged document(s), (iii) Send to Google Docs, and now, (iv) View/Email. We encourage you to install a 30-day free trial to start merging your documents in the cloud!

The “View/Edit” DDP delivery option allows users to email the merged DDP as an attachment through Gmail. We will be announcing additional Google Apps features later this week. Please contact us with any questions.

You can also visit our support site for Google Apps to learn more.

Our latest product offering was announced tonight at the Google Campfire One event at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Drawloop is honored to participate as a Google Apps Marketplace launch partner and excited to offer its document automation service to the millions of Google Apps users who have embraced the cloud.

DDPs for Google Apps is a cloud-based business application that allows users to customize and manage document creation in seconds using Dynamic Document Packages (DDP™). With DDPs, businesses have document control and visibility while reducing the cost associated with traditional document creation. DDPs for Google Apps is ideal for document packages such as sales proposals, quotes, contracts, service agreements, presentations, and any other documents critical to selling or supporting a business’ products and/or services. With DDPs for Google Apps, users can quickly create a DDP to email, download or share using the integration between Drawloop and Google Apps.

Extend Google Apps to Meet Your Business Needs

Users will be able to use and access DDPs from Google’s universal navigation. Rather than manually customizing your sales proposal (cutting, pasting, locating files and manually updating), simply complete a web form and get back your merged and customized sales proposal in seconds. With DDPs, the web form is automatically created.

Use Google Docs in combination with any other docs on your computer. Data can merge into Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel. A DDP can include one (1) or any combination of documents.

DDPs can merge data from a web form into the docs below:

Google Document
Google Spreadsheet
Google Presentation
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft PowerPoint

A DDP can also include any of the following file types – PDFs, JPG, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Publisher, Bitmap, GIF, PNG, Plain Text, Rich Text, XML, HTM/HTML, MHT and WPD files.

Pricing: 30-day free trial – $5 per user / month – A user is defined as any person who is authorized to access DDPs within your Google Apps domain.

Google Blog Post – More great apps for Google Apps

“We are very excited to have Drawloop in the Google Apps Marketplace. Through the Google Apps Marketplace, software vendors like Drawloop are helping us build a rich ecosystem of integrated apps that work seamlessly with Google Apps, allowing IT administrators to leverage the benefits of cloud computing and extend Google Apps to meet more of their business needs. We are happy to offer Drawloop to the millions of Google Apps users who have embraced the cloud.”

Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise
Google, Inc.

Recently, we added the ability to send your documents from LOOP for e-signature through DocuSign Express. We have now extended the flexibility by exposing the service through an interface small enough to easily embed on any personal website or blog. Once you’ve embedded the widget, your users can upload documents, convert them to PDF, and send them to anyone for execution through DocuSign Express. It’s free, easy and you don’t need to register for anything!

Easy as 1-2-3:

1) Upload your file (you can upload several docs and combine them into a single PDF)

2) Click “ESIGN” to send all your files as a single PDF or click “free esign” on an individual file to only send that one through DocuSign Express

3) Fill out a brief web form and then click “submit”

. . . that’s it! Your recipient will be notified via email of the document awaiting their signature, and you’ll receive a confirmation email when they have completed the signing.

LOOP with DocuSign Express Embed Code:

<iframe src="http://api.drawloop.com/google/upload.aspx" style="border: 1px solid #CCCCCC; width: 350px; height: 330px;"></iframe>

We wanted to share a recent review from one of our LOOPlus customers, 1913, on Salesforce.com. We continue to expand our salesforce.com users while refining our document automation services. If you use salesforce.com, we encourage you to install our free trial and begin automating document creation for your entire team.

Excellent Tool – Easy to USe
02/15/08 by 1913

Great tool (LOOPlus) to automate document merge and publishing processes. Very easy to maintain. The support team is quick to answer any question.

Learn more about LOOP and LOOPlus on Salesforce.com

If the answer is yes, we have the solution. Our LOOP service will eliminate your frustration. As you already know, one major problem plagues many electronic fax services . . . how do you quickly and efficiently send or print multiple documents and specific pages through an electronic fax service?

With LOOP, you can upload all of your documents required for the fax, select specific pages, organize the final page order and then package everything to a single PDF . . . problem solved. No more headaches or wasted time printing and sending multiple files to your fax service.

Register today, it’s free!