Overview
Note: Salesforce Proposal Builder is an add-on feature and must be enabled prior to use. Contact your account manager, or accountmanagers@responsive.io, to enable it..
Salesforce Proposal Builder provides a way for Sales and Marketing teams to get ahead of opportunities by providing personalized and professional selling/informational documents before they are requested. There are three main building blocks to Salesforce Proposal Builder; catalogs, section templates, and response templates.
Here is an example of the Salesforce Proposal Builder generation cycle:
Permissions
If you the have the Custom Roles feature turned on, and want to create a role that allows someone to create proposals from SFDC, here are the minimum role permissions needed:
Creating Catalog Structures
Catalog structures are templates that can be used to define and organize various products and services. To create a catalog structure, follow the steps below:
- Go to Organization Settings > Proposals > Catalog Structure.
- Click Create New.
- On the Create New Catalog Structure pop-up, enter a name for the catalog structure.
- Define the catalog Merge Tags under the Structure Elements tab.
- You can select from Rich Text, Text, Numeric, and Formula options.
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Formulas help perform arithmetic operations between merge tags. Fee tables in proposals and Sales Order forms can be quickly generated using this function. It also eliminates the need for manual calculation and entry of cost for each product or solution specified in the proposal or form.
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You can construct formulas using merge tags and operators such as +, -, *, and /. For example:
((([catalog#BaseRate]*[noofemployees])+(([catalog#BaseRate]-0.25))*[quantity])/([noofemployees]+[quantity]))/(1-[commision])
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Clicking Save validates the formula. If there are any missing brackets in the merge tag, or a merge tag itself is missing after the operator, an alert displays letting you know the formula is invalid.
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When custom fields with a Textbox type that has a suffix of % are used in formula, the % is automatically replaced with /100 in the formula.
- You can select from Rich Text, Text, Numeric, and Formula options.
- Click Create. A success message appears and the Catalog Structure displays.
Managing Catalog Structures
Once the catalogs are created, you can perform the following actions from the More Options menu:
- Select Edit to edit or delete the catalog structure.
- Select the Delete to delete it.
- Select Export to export the catalog structure to an Excel file and download it to your computer.
- Select Import from the drop-down menu to import it.
Note: Imported files must have the following columns: Catalog Name, Catalog Display Name, and Primary BU (if BUs are enabled for the company).
Creating and Managing Catalogs
Catalogs serve as a listing of all the various products, offerings, services of a particular company or product line. You can create and manage catalogs from the Catalogs section.
- Click Catalogs to go to the Manage Catalogs page, then click Create New
- On the Create New Catalog pop-up:
- Select a catalog structure from the drop-down options.
- Enter a name for the catalog and a display name.
- Select the Primary Business Unit if BUs are enabled for your organization.
- Select an option to share the catalog with other business units.
- Add more owners, if required.
- Add the required tags.
- Enter values for the structure elements.
- Click Create. The catalog is created and a success message displays.
Creating and Managing Section Templates
Section templates serve as pre-written sections needed for various proposals. They may vary in inclusion and order based on the specific requirements of each proposal (such as Introductions, Add-ons, or Professional Services, for example). See Working With Section Templates for more information.
Using Catalog Merge Tags within Section Templates
You can use a catalog merge tags within section templates.
Note: Catalog merge tags are automatically replaced with the content of the Catalogs that are chosen during proposal creation in Salesforce.
- Click the section template name.
- Click the Menu next to the Section Description field (which can be useful for Executive Summaries), then click Merge Tags , copy the tag, and paste it in the description.
- Click Save or Save and Next. The merge tags specified under descriptions are saved to the section template.
Creating Response Templates
Response templates are used to configure the final format of the finished proposal. See Working with Response Templates for more information.
Creating Proposal Groups
To simplify the Salesforce proposal creation process, you can group created catalogs, section templates, and response templates together to create Proposal groups.
- Go to Organization Settings > Proposals > Proposal Group and click Create New.
- Do the following on the Create Proposal Group pop-up:
- Enter a name for the proposal group.
- Select the required catalogs, section templates, and response templates to add to the proposal group.
- Click Create. A success message displays and the proposal group is created.
Creating Proposals from Salesforce
You can easily create Proposals from Salesforce without logging into our application.
Note: Proposal settings must be configured in Responsive to be able to generate proposals from Salesforce.
- From the Salesforce page, click Create Proposal to go to the Responsive Projects page in Salesforce.
Note: The proposal groups that have been created in Responsive are listed here. - Specify the required details, and select a proposal template.
Note: Once the template is selected, the sections, catalogs, and response templates available in the proposal template are listed in each section. - Check the boxes next to the required items.
Note: If the Auto-Publish Export Response Packages to Salesforce option is turned off in your Organization Settings, you must also check the Auto-publish proposal to Salesforce box. - Optional: While creating the proposal, you can create a project at the same time by attaching RFx files and other supporting documents. If you'd like to create a project during this process, see the Creating Projects During the Proposal Creation Process section below.
- Click Generate Proposal. The Preview Proposal window displays.
- Click Generate. The created proposal is exported as a package and is displayed on the Salesforce page.
Creating Projects During the Proposal Creation Process
While creating a proposal, you can directly create a project by attaching RFx files and other supporting documents.
Note: You can either use files from Notes and Attachments, or import local files.
- If an RFx file is is attached, the Create Project button appears instead of the Generate Proposal button during Step 5 of the Creating Proposals from Salesforce section above.
- Upon clicking Create Project, a Success message appears (to view the project, click Open Project on the message window). The project is created and appears in the Projects page of Responsive and is also visible in Salesforce.
Salesforce CPQ Integration
Note: This is an add-on feature and must be enabled prior to use. Contact your account manager, or accountmanagers@responsive.io, to enable it.
This feature allows you to include Salesforce CPQ quotes in projects with Proposal Builder. Users can pull pricing tables from quote objects and configure Quote Tables quickly and easily, allowing you to configure multiple quote object items within a single document. Proposal Builder includes all the quotes associated with the opportunity, and the quote details appear at the bottom of the proposal document.
Note: The quotes must be associated with the opportunity before Quote Tables can be used.
- Locate the Quote Table option.
- Click the Edit icon and select a Quote template. The selected quotes are generated along with the Proposal Document and is embedded at the end of it.