Why Document Management in Salesforce is Important? 5 Reasons
Data and documents are at the center of every business process in Salesforce. However, the profuseness of documents always creates challenges for users as an effective Salesforce Document Management System is not everyone’s forte. Having said that, your challenges in managing Salesforce documents shouldn’t impede the growth of your business. As a Nitro study reports, 50% of employees spend productive time creating and managing documents, which shows the minimal time they have left to focus on their high-value work. The only solution for this challenge is embracing a robust document management solution for Salesforce! Before learning how can such a solution help you, let’s take a look at document management in Salesforce. What is Salesforce Document Management System? Document management in Salesforce refers to how a company handles its day-to-day documents within the CRM platform. This includes creating, organizing, storing, accessing, and managing files such as PDFs, Word documents, JPGs, and PPTs. Documents come through many means, such as email attachments, manual uploads, or 3rd-party apps. Whether the business falls in the range of a small, medium, or large scale, users are required to manage a plethora of documents. Document Management Features in Salesforce Salesforce is now more than just a CRM, it’s a full-blown ecosystem that powers businesses with automation, AI, and analytics. Let’s explore Salesforce document management capabilities: XfilesPro The One-Stop Solution for Advanced Salesforce Document Management Download the Free Datasheet! Attachments Attachments provide a basic way to add files directly to Salesforce records. Users can upload supporting documents such as receipts, invoices, or contracts. Key Features: Quick and easy way to attach files to records Allows users to reference documents within customer or project records Limitations: There is no version control, making it difficult to track file updates Limited metadata support, reducing searchability Documents Tab The Documents Tab allows businesses to store and organize files within individual Salesforce records, such as accounts, opportunities, and cases. This feature is particularly useful for attaching contracts, proposals, or invoices to specific business transactions. Key Features: Simple document storage within Salesforce records Supports basic file uploads and downloads Useful for record-specific file management Limitations: Cannot be used for global file sharing across the organization Lacks advanced document lifecycle management tools Salesforce Knowledge For businesses managing articles, FAQs, and documentation in a structured format, Salesforce Knowledge could be the best solution. It serves as a self-service knowledge base where employees and customers can easily find solutions without repetitive inquiries. Articles can be linked to cases and records, making it highly beneficial for customer support teams. Key Features: A centralized knowledge base for quick access to information Supports article categorization and search functionality Can be linked to customer support cases for improved service efficiency Limitations: Primarily designed for knowledge management, not general file storage Limited customization for broader document workflows Files Home Files Home serves as a centralized hub where users can store, manage, and collaborate on documents within Salesforce. It provides a unified view of all files associated with records, making organization and retrieval seamless. Users can upload various file types, including documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and images. Key Features: Centralized file storage with easy access to related records Supports multiple file formats Integration with Chatter and Communities for enhanced collaboration Limitations: Limited metadata support for files Lacks advanced document management capabilities Salesforce CRM Content Salesforce CRM Content is a dedicated content management system designed for organizing, sharing, and tracking documents across an organization. It includes version control, document categorization, and advanced search functionality, ensuring you can efficiently manage files. Additionally, it enables access permissions and workflow automation for document approvals. Key Features: Advanced file organization with version control Granular access permissions for document security Approval workflows for compliance and document governance Limitations: Requires a separate license and additional configuration Not cost efficient Not the best choice for teams needing lightweight file management Why You Need A Salesforce Document Management Solution It’s widely held that businesses managing millions of documents can benefit from document management solutions. This belief is true considering the advantages that the implementation of a document management system (DMS) in Salesforce can drive for your business. XfilesPro Choosing The Right Document Management Application For Salesforce Get the Free Datasheet! While Salesforce offers several capabilities for document management, many organizations seek the support of a 3rd party document management solution that covers their end-to-end requirements. Five reasons why a Salesforce document management system is important: Overcoming Salesforce Storage Limit Salesforce’s limited file storage makes it challenging to manage a high volume of documents within the CRM. However, a smart document management system can help by automatically offloading large volumes of documents from your Org, freeing up space. This not only optimizes storage but also enhances platform performance, and reduces load time enabling efficient document management in Salesforce. Huge Cost Saving Once you exceed the Salesforce file storage limit, you need to upgrade the storage space for a certain cost. What if that space also gets exhausted? You will upgrade it again. But how long can this strategy last as a sustainable approach, considering the money loss associated with it? With an efficient Salesforce document management solution, you can address this concern by eliminating the need for storage upgrades. Documents are moved out of Salesforce, and the file storage space is always freed up. Enhanced Business Efficiency Adopting a Salesforce document management system boosts your productivity by reducing the time and effort needed to build, manage, and store documents. For instance, bulk contract creation, approval, and storage on a different platform can be automated in Salesforce. The more you minimize document management time, the more time workers have to focus on strategic tasks, speeding up decision-making and boosting overall efficiency. Seamless Scaling As your business grows, so does the number of documents you need to manage. With a Salesforce document management system, whether you’re scaling in terms of geographic regions, departments, or product lines, the system grows with you. It gives you the capacity to manage an increasing amount of content
WEBINAR RECAP: One-Click Document Generation in Salesforce & Auto-Storage in an External System: The Big Surprise Unveiled
We did it for you! We hosted yet another webinar session that gave us a feather in the cap! It takes us immense pleasure to let you know that XfilesPro’s latest webinar held on 6th July 2022 on ‘One-Click Document Generation in Salesforce & Auto-Storage in an External Sysytem’ became an outstanding turnout. We hosted many people who joined us live from all over the world! We’ve been blown away by the participants’ overpowering response and we thank everyone from the bottom of our hearts for their valuable presence in our live event that marked our big success. If you haven’t attended the webinar because of any restraints and now FOMO gets a hold of you, we dedicate this blog to you. Here’s a quick tour of all the occurrences that took place in the insightful session that can give you a high-level picture of something you missed out on! XfilesPro – The Next-Gen File Management Application for Salesforce For us, no way is better than beginning with XfilesPro! Priyadarshi Sahu, one of our speakers, set the webinar in motion by recounting an intelligent approach toward file management automation in Salesforce, which is nothing but the implementation of XfilesPro. He dived deep into the five-star-rated AppExchange application’s expertise to migrate massive files from Salesforce to any external system (OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.) of the user’s choice with just a click, at lightning speed. With his exposition of ‘Auto File Export,’ an important functionality and calling card of XfilesPro, the joiners got a deeper understanding of how the product can make their life easier and more productive. As the audience got more excited to learn further, Priyadarshi expounded on various other features of XfilesPro, including file collaboration, external file integration, folder management, and file preview — which made the attendees bounce off the walls. Now came about the most exciting part of Priyadarshi’s session — What’s New with XfilesPro? Indeed, this was something many guests seriously looked forward to as they are using XfilesPro and are thrilled to explore more capabilities of it. Below are the two recent updations in XfilesPro that Priyadarshi kept in store for everyone: Tagging for SharePoint: A feature that allows users to save tags against files on the file system as well as in SharePoint Document Libraries to describe what the content contains and what it does. File Sync in Google Drive: An intelligent yet easy option to map the users’ existing files in Google Drive or in their on-premise storage system that can also preview in Salesforce. With all that said, Priyadarshi concluded his session by demonstrating a bird’s eye view of XfilesPro in terms of numbers, which shed light on some interesting facts about the leading app and its dominance in the industry. Announcing DocuPrime – The Next Big Thing Now the time has reached to make the big announcement all were excitedly waiting for! To blow the gaff, Sutirtha Roy, the Senior Consultant – CEPTES SOFTWARE, took the stage and unveiled DocuPrime, our latest native AppExchange application to automatically generate documents in Salesforce. Sutirtha explained at length how DocuPrime can open door to automation and how easily it eliminates manual efforts and time required to create error-free documents. Indeed, the announcement of DocuPrime during the webinar knocked down the audience with a feather. As the discussion progressed, we got the audience’s pulse, which made us excited to reveal more about this new product from the house of CEPTES. Sutirtha delivered an insightful take on the next-gen capabilities of DocuPrime (other than automated document generation) including unlimited versioning of templates, document preview, workflow & lightning flow, and eSignature. Altogether, Sutirtha’s take clearly showed what all capabilities can make DocuPrime stand out from the pack! How XfilesPro & DocuPrime Go Hand in Hand —The Twin Power Now that everyone understood that DocuPrime had something to do with XfilesPro as the former enables document generation in Salesforce and the latter allows its auto storage in an external system. This was just what we wanted to offer through our novel concept named ‘The Twin Power’ or ‘The Power of Two’ — a powerful association between DocuPrime and XfilesPro that can use across different functions of an enterprise. Taking the concept to the next level, Sutirtha gave a live demo of the whole process — from generating a document in Salesforce to storing it in an external system — all with just a few clicks. It’s Time to Wrap Up! As Sutirtha winded up his session, there were plenty of questions poured into us from the attendees’ side! Our speakers answered a few of them in the final Q&A session and left the others with a promise that we would get back to them via email. And, that’s it! Our much-awaited webinar buttoned up on a high note. If you want to see the slide-by-slide presentation of the complete webinar, do check it out here! Else, if you prefer to watch the recorded version of the webinar, we’ve got that also for you. Watch it here now! Don’t forget to share this blog and stay tuned for more exciting updates to level up your Salesforce journey! AMARLAL
How to Overcome the Pitfalls in Salesforce File Storage Management with OneDrive Integration
In today’s technology-driven world, Salesforce has become the go-to choice among businesses in respect to CRM platforms. By providing excellent support for the sales and marketing needs of businesses, it enables them to manage customer accounts, opportunities, activities, and much more in an even efficient manner. But a massive volume of diverse content is produced during these processes which is then stored in the Salesforce file storage. Now this content requires regular organizing and management but inherently Salesforce lacks those effective document management and storage efficiency capabilities. The fact that this sensible CRM system is not designed to perform document management functions also contributes to its limitations. Also in the list of drawbacks is the limited amount of native Salesforce file storage. To overcome these limitations, most companies choose to integrate Salesforce with external content management systems. OneDrive, a file hosting service powered by Microsoft, is one such popular solution that enterprises routinely choose for managing and securing their Salesforce files. This article aims to highlight some of the benefits of seamless collaboration between Salesforce and OneDrive & how it extends the CRM’s collaboration and document management capabilities. OneDrive: What Exactly Is It? OneDrive is Microsoft’s file hosting and synchronization service that allows users to securely store their important files in a single place and then access them from virtually anywhere. This easy-to-use cloud storage solution lets users store files and personal data in the cloud, share them with other users, & sync these files across various platforms. Owing to its cross-platform design, OneDrive also makes it easy to collaborate with others in real-time using the Microsoft 365 integration. When it comes to professional purpose, OneDrive for Business is available to offer cloud storage to businesses. Managed by the organization itself, it enables users to share and collaborate on documents with other co-workers. Powered by SharePoint, ODFB grants each individual user a personal storage space while facilitating the collaboration among team members. Why Should You Consider Using OneDrive The cloud storage application has several notable advantages for the user experience: Remote access from any device– OneDrive offers the convenience of flexibility and mobility which comes in handy when employees work remotely or data is stored across multiple locations. This means that all files saved in the OneDrive storage immediately become available across all the devices synchronized with the OneDrive platform. Automatic file back-up– When using OneDrive, the files are periodically and automatically uploaded to the cloud storage which ultimately creates a reliable back-up that can be restored any time. Document sharing & collaboration– Users can easily share files or folders with their team, depending on the permission granted. Files can be shared either through direct link-sharing or link-sharing with some sign-in verification. Collaborative document editing– All the shared documents can be instantly edited in real-time through the co-authoring feature which promotes streamlined collaboration among team members. Top-notch security features– The default security features in OneDrive include not only encrypting data in transit but also providing encryption-at-rest. It also allows users to encrypt specific files when needed, further enhancing security. Teams can also be designed to provide specific access permissions to different users, offering yet another layer of security. Storage space– Essentially OneDrive gives business users up to 1 TB of storage space per user, which is far more than what most users would ever use. OneDrive also provides options to control what files are synced to the personal folder while allowing administrators to easily determine how much storage space each employee is using. Also read: Salesforce & OneDrive Integration – How to transform your Salesforce file management needs The Salesforce-OneDrive integration ultimately paves the way for highly intuitive and centralized document management in the Salesforce ecosystem. Such kind of integration ensures scalability and future-proofing for the Salesforce file storage and the file repository costs. By collaborating with OneDrive inside the Salesforce system, users will also be able to extend the integration functionalities to other Salesforce products such as Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, & Experience Cloud. How Is Salesforce-OneDrive Integration Advantageous Listed are some of the ways businesses stand to enjoy from an integration between Salesforce and OneDrive systems: Cost Savings– When using Salesforce, the licensing cost per user is more expensive than purchasing OneDrive for all employees due to which even a full-fledged collaboration between SharePoint and OneDrive is cheaper than purchasing new licenses in Salesforce. Improved Flexibility for the Sales Teams– The Salesforce-OneDrive collaboration helps in saving time and effort by enabling quick and easy access to the required resources. The synchronization between the systems enables real-time interactions and instant notifications regarding any updates. Also read: A Leading Oil & Gas Solution Provider, Stored & Collaborated all their Salesforce Files Externally in OneDrive using XfilesPro Storage for Large Documents– Though OneDrive allows offline file access by syncing with SharePoint, the extensive file support in Salesforce gets restricted to 2GB. After carrying out the Salesforce-OneDrive integration, businesses can bypass the restrictions of space constraints and ensure seamless operations every time. Better Document Management– OneDrive provides automatic file versioning for documents stored in Salesforce and lets users decide what version has to be finalized and what all will be discarded, thereby allowing teams to have better control on their documentations. Along with version control, OneDrive integration also offers online & mobile editing, native sharing capabilities, and custom workflows across both systems, which further simplify the document management process. Strengthened Security– OneDrive enforces adequate permissions and authorization rights in order to access the documents stored in its storage, which can be directly governed by the administrator. Therefore, there is no need for greater admin security after integrating Salesforce with OneDrive system. Better Collaboration among Teams– Along with Salesforce-OneDrive integration comes improved file collaboration. This integration allows the users to easily share and maintain multiple documents among various departments as well as editing them in real-time, thus enabling direct and swift collaboration. Let XfilesPro be your guide for Salesforce-OneDrive Integration If struggling with Salesforce Files Connect is not your cup of
Make your Thanksgiving Special with these Salesforce File Management Tips
Finally the time has come for one of the most awaited festivals of the year. The Harvest Festival, more commonly known as Thanksgiving Day, is just around the corner. This annual national holiday in the United States and Canada bears its origin from people celebrating and thanking God for the bountiful harvest and other blessings of the past year. In the US, Thanksgiving Day is observed on the fourth Thursday of November which corresponds to 26th November this year. This federal holiday is often full of pomp and color and is a great time to exchange gifts with loved ones and share beautiful Thanksgiving messages. The festival is also synonymous with the special Thanksgiving meal which includes the traditional fare of turkey, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Parades and football games also have long associations with the holiday. The popular Thanksgiving Day parade organized by Macy’s department store in New York typically features marching bands, performers, and elaborate floats. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we too are extremely thankful for the overwhelming response our file management and collaboration application, XfilesPro has received in the past financial year. A great number of Salesforce enterprises have implemented XfilesPro to efficiently manage their Salesforce files and attachments. In return for the benefit of Salesforce admins, we too would like to shed some light on effective document management best practices. Without doubt, Salesforce is now the #1 CRM platform trusted by thousands of users ranging from individuals to big corporations. At the enterprise level, Salesforce document management is one of the major business operations. It helps Salesforce users in creating, storing, modifying, transferring, copying, and deleting necessary documents in an efficient manner. Some of the effective best practices are as follows: Native Modules for Document Management– The Salesforce platform has five off-the-shell in-built modules that help the users in handling important documents and aid in efficient content management. These include: Attachments, Documents Tab, Files Home, Salesforce Knowledge, and Salesforce CRM Content. Document Organizing– Salesforce CRM Content can be used to classify Salesforce documents according to different criteria thereby streamlining the process of document searching. This increases the accuracy as well as the speed of the document search process. Automate Document Management– Salesforce CRM Content also provides several automation tools that allow users to subscribe to specific authors, files, topics, or complete libraries to keep them abreast with necessary latest updates. This gives the ability to use relevant marketing materials for increasing sales and knowledge-sharing. Mass uploading Salesforce Documents– A Salesforce admin can use the Data Loader tool to add multiple documents, files, and links or update necessary documents with the same ID in Salesforce CRM Content Libraries. Through this they can update the knowledge database and create a backup for necessary CRM records in a systematic manner. Integration with External Storages– The Salesforce CRM can be connected with external file storage systems to conveniently access and manage the external files via Salesforce interface. Using external systems also helps to combat the challenges of limited storage space. Deploying External Document Management Solutions– To overcome the severe limitations of the Salesforce native options, a relevant external document management solution can be implemented. Such solutions facilitate seamless integration with different systems without much hassle and exuberant costs. Also read: Document Management in Salesforce: A Brief Introduction to its Best Practices Most Salesforce admins will vouch for the file management capabilities of XfilesPro that facilitates seamless storage and collaboration of files with various external systems. Using this highly customizable and admin-friendly application, Salesforce admins can collaborate with Cloud-based storage systems like Google Shared Drive, OneDrive, Amazon S3, SharePoint, and Dropbox and On-premise systems like SMB, SFTP, and Network Drive. To know more about XfilesPro and how it can facilitate external system integration with Salesforce, please get in touch with us. AMARLAL
A Brief Overview of Advanced Document Management in Salesforce
Today, enterprises expect their CRM systems to be more than just document repositories because of workflows, proposals, agreements and various other client information need to be managed periodically. Therefore document management is definitely one of the most important features that companies look for in their CRM systems. This feature facilitates nearly all of the sales processes, providing content to clients and partners. Therefore Salesforce, being one of the leading CRM platforms in the world, has a number of functions that can satisfy most if not all the needs of business users. When it comes to Salesforce, it’s unique and exceptional file and document management system takes utmost care to reduce a Salesforce admin’s complexities by simplifying file management, enhancing presentation skills, catering to all sorts of files, and finally managing these files efficiently. Not only this, having dealt with myriad types of documents, Salesforce has been constantly improvising to cater to the latest technology and needs. Salesforce has 5 off-the-shell modules for files and document management with several variations. These inbuilt modules include: Attachments– One of the first tools launched by Salesforce was Attachments. As is obvious from the name, it allows users to create Attachment lists and attach different types of files to particular Salesforce records (like, a contract, offer, or proposal). In this case, the size limit of the file to be attached is 25 MB, when attached directly to the Attachment list, whereas even for multiple files attached to the same email the size limit remains 25 MB, with a maximum size of 5 MB per file. Documents Tab– Salesforce Documents Tab allows users to store their web-based resources and Visualforce files, such as custom logos and DOT files, in folders without attaching them to any particular records. Though this file is not attached to any record, it can easily be accessed or used whenever its need arises. For example, users can add a custom logo to the meeting requests by uploading the stored logo directly to the documents tab. Files Home– Salesforce Files Home is a kind of cloud-based repository where files can be uploaded, privately stored, synced and shared among team members and coworkers to kick-start Chatter collaboration. This document repository specifically stores files without any association to objects. It also allows synchronizing the information in the documents in real-time, across all devices, including desktop and mobile. It also has a plethora of exquisite features such as file filtering, drag-and-drop, file syncing, and files-specific search tools. Salesforce Files ideally suits co-working on unique documents, like client proposals. Salesforce Knowledge– Salesforce Knowledge is a corporate knowledge-sharing platform, commonly used for creating a base for information sharing among employees. It allows users to create, edit, search, organize, and share knowledge articles in libraries among the organization\’s employees. Users can also use Salesforce knowledge and a particular web portal to share documents with their clients outside the organization. It supports a maximum file size of 5 MB for all attachments. Salesforce CRM Content– Salesforce CRM Content is the most widely used content management tool that lets users create, duplicate, work, and modify official corporate documents, like case studies or sales presentations, in such a manner that only the creator can work on it. Once they are ready, it also allows them to make this content accessible for their coworkers as well as to external users such as clients, partners, and customers in the form of content packets. As the storage space in Salesforce is already limited, rather than extending these limits, it recommended to use different cloud-based storage services so as to ease the pressure. Salesforce launched Salesforce File Connect, an OOTB tool, for exactly this purpose of integrating the Salesforce system with other external systems. But even this tool has its limitations, so it’s better to choose an alternative integration solution. And the best place to look for these solutions is the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace. One such AppExchange application that can help you seamlessly store and collaborate files with external systems is XfilesPro. This highly customizable and admin-friendly application performs exceptionally well with Service Cloud, Experience/Community Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Salesforce Platform. With XfilesPro, Salesforce admins can not only seamlessly enable a 360-degree file collaboration including integration with various external storage systems, but they can also cut back on their file storage costs significantly. Learn more about XfilesPro’s file management capabilities. XfilesPro can be used to collaborate the Salesforce system with various external files storage systems like Cloud-based storage systems like Google Shared Drive, OneDrive, Amazon S3, SharePoint, and Dropbox and On-premise systems like SMB, SFTP, and Network Drive. Loaded with features like a centralized content management system, efficient file and folder hierarchy management, multi-org file integration, large-volume file migration, and community portal collaboration, XfilesPro is an ideal solution for integrating Salesforce with cloud-based systems. To know more about XfilesPro and how it can facilitate external system integration with Salesforce, please get in touch with us. AMARLAL
