Drawloop Blog

Our team wanted to post a quick “thank you” to JP for the nice mention of Drawloop in his recent blog post on Salesforce.com. You can learn more about JP at his blog.

AppExchange All-Star: view blog post
JP Seabury, New Hampshire User Group Leader

“When Sara Varni Bright (Sr. Marketing Manager, AppExchange) asked me to write an article on my favorite AppExchange apps, my first thought was “Oh my, where do I begin?” Then she said, “3-5 paragraphs would be ideal,” and my next thought was “Mission: Impossible.”

I currently work as Principal Salesforce.com Architect for Comcast, but I’ve also managed a Force.com technical consulting company and volunteered development / admin time for Salesforce Foundation grant recipients. I’ve downloaded and used more than 30 different apps, for various organizations. It is tough narrowing the list down, but here are my Top 5:

App: LOOP Document Services

Publisher:
Drawloop Technologies

Description:
Drawloop is an extremely powerful, highly flexible application that allows you to automate various types of documents. Have a PowerPoint presentation that you need to update monthly and deliver to your executive team? Don’t spend hours exporting the raw data from Salesforce, making it pretty in Excel graphs and then building a PowerPoint slidedeck! Use Drawloop to simplify that process to a click of a button – and let your management team get their weekly/monthly updates “on demand”. I’ve used Drawloop and DocuSign as a tool for getting customer survey feedback directly into Salesforce. It can also be used to automate price quotes, proposals, contracts, and more. The company has fantastic product support, as I commented on my AppExchange review of this product.”

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.

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.

This week, Salesforce.com announced Aloha Apps. Aloha Apps* don’t count against your system limits for apps, tabs, and objects—no matter which salesforce.com edition** you’re using. If you are familiar with system limits on Salesforce, the decision to add an application to your Salesforce org was often impacted due to number of objects, apps and/or tabs used in the org.

Drawloop is pleased to be an Aloha App on Salesforce. Again, this means you can install and deploy our powerful document services without any impact on your Salesforce org. We encourage you to learn how our document merge and automation service can be deployed for your entire organization. Thinking about deploying a Force.com application? Add our powerful document features within your Force App.

Contact us today for more information.

Our team continues to work hard expanding our integrations and “mashups” with other cloud technologies. One interesting integration relates to Box.net and how our OpenBox service can easily be deployed and integrated to the Box.net Gmail Gadget.

We continue to aggressively integrate with cloud technologies to help our document automation enterprise customers seamlessly work in the cloud for all of their business needs. These integrations have allowed our document automation services to expand functionality for the benefit of all users who have embraced the cloud. For example, with our Box.net and Google Apps integrations, we can now offer our customers cloud content management, collaboration and communication services while keeping our focus on document creation and automation.

Gmail + Box.net + Drawloop

The Box.net Gmail gadget is located in the left-hand sidebar of your Gmail account, where you can access all your Box files and folders, as well as utilize the Drawloop OpenBox service.

Box.net Gmail Gadget Set-up

Step 1:
Log into Gmail -> Settings -> Labs -> Enable “Add any gadget by URL”

If you don’t have Labs enabled in Gmail / Google Apps, click here.

Step2:
Settings -> Gadget -> past in the URL below

http://www.box.net/google_gadget/gmail/gadget_specs.xml

Now, you are ready to use the integration between Gmail, Box.net and Drawloop. From the Box.net Gmail Gadget, simply select the file or files you want to convert and/or combine to a single PDF and right-click to do so with Drawloop. When complete, you can right-click to send as a link through Gmail.

Requirements:

- Box.net Account (sign-up now)
- Drawloop OpenBox Service (sign-up now)
- Google Apps (sign-up now)

We continue to expand and strengthen our cloud integrations on a daily basis. We will be announcing some exciting new enhancements and features for Google Apps soon!

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.

We are pleased to announce the integration and launch of our convert and combine PDF services on Box.net. These services are available today on OpenBox to the 50,000+ companies on Box.net.

Convert to PDF: Free service allowing a Box.net user to quickly convert files to a PDF and then deliver through sharing or outside delivery services like Gmail. You never leave your Box.net account.

Available file types:
Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, JPG, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Publisher, Bitmap, GIF, PNG, Plain Text, Rich Text, XML, MHT and WPD files.

Combine to PDF: Subscription service ($1 per user / month) allowing a Box.net user to select multiple files from Box to combine to a PDF. The interface allows you to pick individual pages to control and customize the final PDF. This is an excellent service for sales teams as it allows you to convert, organize, and combine files to PDF. Your customer will appreciate receiving one organized, professional, and visually consistent secure PDF rather than a series of files that are confusing, out of order, and time consuming for the recipient to review.

Example – Use Case:
Sales rep needs to share or email a Proposal. The proposal contains the following elements:

1) Cover letter (.doc)
2) Quote (.xls)
3) Product data sheet (.pdf)

Rather than sharing 3 files or emailing 3 separate attachments, use “Combine to PDF” to select the above three (3) files from Box and combine into a single PDF (Proposal.pdf) to share or email to your prospective client. You can control how the Proposal is presented and make sure it is reviewed in the proper order.

“Convert to PDF” and “Combine to PDF” represent the first two document services deployed on Box.net. We will be adding our DDP (Dynamic Document Package) service on Box.net in the near future. This will allow Box.net users to dynamically merge data into document packages and leverage all of the sharing and collaboration tools that exist within Box.

About Box.net, Inc.
Box.net (www.box.net) now serves over 50,000 companies from small businesses to Fortune 1000 that look to Box to simplify online content management, accelerate team productivity and connect employees with a familiar interface that anyone can use.

We are excited to announce our Amazon S3 document storage service for Salesforce, called LOOP Storage Services. LOOP Storage Services offers document storage for Salesforce. It provides a simple interface to store and manage any files, at any time, from within a documents tab or within an object in Salesforce.

Features:

A simple interface to store and manage any files or documents, at any time, from within Salesforce

Use single or multiple folder hierarchies

Add security (profile, role, user or user group) and keywords to your stored documents

NO file size limits . . . unless 5GB is not enough per document

How It Works:

Salesforce Tab: Custom Documents tab allowing you to store and manage all of your documents – simply upload and organize your files

Documents in Objects: Allows you to store documents within objects. You can also organize with document folders inside the objects. Deployed for all standard objects – contact Drawloop for custom objects

Amazon S3: All of your documents are managed within Salesforce but are stored with Amazon S3

How To Get Started:

1) Install LOOP Storage Services from AppExchange

2) Sign-up for an Amazon S3 account

Drawloop is an AWS Solution Provider. The AWS Solution Providers Program serves a growing community of Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that offer a rich set of solutions and consulting services on AWS.

Contact us today with any questions.

Are you a Salesforce user? Are you worried about your documents using up Salesforce storage? Are you interested in a more robust document storage service within Salesforce?

If yes, please contact us today to join our LOOP Storage beta user group. LOOP Storage provides a simple interface to store and manage any files, at any time, from within a documents tab and/or from within an object in Salesforce.

Now is a great time to implement tangible solutions to reduce costs and increase profitability. Our simple user interface and out-of-the-box integration with Amazon S3 allows you to store, manage and retrieve all of your documents at market competitive pricing. There is no hardware or software required.

Next Steps:

1) Contact us to join the beta user group

2) Install LOOP Storage Services

3) Sign-up for Amazon Simple Storage Service