How I Solved This: Using Quip and Salesforce Together to Manage Projects

Welcome to another post in the “How I Solved This” series. In this series, we do a deep dive into a specific business problem and share how one #AwesomeAdmin chose to solve it. Once you learn how they solved their specific problem, you will be inspired to try their solution yourself! Let’s take a look at how Prag Ravichandran Kamalaveni uses Quip to track project documentation inside Salesforce. 

Key business problem:

I want my users to be able to document projects natively in Salesforce for more seamless collaboration and improved project management/documentation. The documentation solution will integrate with Salesforce and meet our internal security requirements. 

Background:

A large utility company with 40,000 employees and offices across North America uses Salesforce to track and enhance its business processes. The company has an internal  Salesforce team, and they work with a Salesforce consultancy for strategic oversight. Historically, the company has used a project management tool to track internal projects. However, they plan to decommission this platform and replace it with Salesforce and Quip. 

Leveraging Salesforce and Quip was selected as a solution so that contractors and internal employees can better collaborate and track the progress of projects, all within Salesforce. 

How I solved it:

1) Integrate Quip with Salesforce

To integrate Quip with Salesforce, follow the steps outlined in this Trailhead module.

In the Admin console of Sales or Service Cloud, find the Quip section and follow the steps. You can start by testing the integration in your Sandbox environment if you wish.

2) Create custom objects to track project documentation

Once Quip is integrated with Salesforce, you can create several custom objects. Using a new Project Documentation object, I connected Cases, Project Members, Quip Documents, and Files in one location for ease of visibility and reporting. The image below demonstrates what the architecture should look like in Salesforce when setting this up. 

3) Link the custom Project Documentation object to Project Members, Cases, and Files

Here’s a more granular look at each of the objects, how they’re used, and how they relate to each other:

1. Project Documentation: 

• • Use Record Types to share project records immediately with the appropriate teams or users.
  • Categorize projects in Salesforce for easily accessible documentation.

2. Project Members (Junction Object): 

• • Use to attach contacts to Project Documentation records.
    • Keep track of which users are working on which projects.
    • Report on project status and provide insights through dashboards for senior leadership, project managers, etc.

3. Cases:

• • Relate Cases to projects in order to show the origin of documentation requests and track end-to-end progress.

4. Files: 

• • The Salesforce Files Component allows you to keep all files and knowledge on the project in one place (including Quip files linked to the Salesforce record).
    • This makes it much easier to onboard team members to projects because all project information exists in one place and you no longer need to worry about lost files.

4) Add the Quip Component to the custom object record page

Using Lightning App Builder, I added the Quip Document Lightning Component to the record page so that my users can create and work with fully functional Quip documents directly within Salesforce objects and records.

Using this component, I specified that all Quip documents created from this component follow a specific template, saving you time with future project documentation.

5) Add the “Project Tracker” Quip Live App and use in-line comments

With the Project Tracker Live App in Quip, project tasks can be assigned to one or more Quip users. You can track how the project is progressing in real-time with custom statuses and due dates for each task, and add attachment links too. All team members can view who has ownership over various aspects of the project, leading to faster turnarounds and better outcomes. Added benefits include fewer emails and fewer meetings!

In-line comments

Another useful tool in Quip is in-line commenting. Team members can highlight key points or areas of concern and ask questions, make suggestions, or add other commentary, including emojis! The in-line comments feature keeps a record of all conversations and provides an easily auditable history of comments and changes in one convenient document.

Business results:

After implementing Quip and Salesforce to track and manage projects, the team saw a dramatic decrease in emails (from 200 to 9 weekly!). Centralizing Quip project documentation in Salesforce also improved team collaboration and productivity, and solidified a single source of truth. 

Adoption among the team was high; a couple of notable features the team has found especially valuable include:  

• Quip Chat: Helps facilitate communication between internal and external users, making collaboration more seamless. 
• Quip Live Apps: Provide everyone with real-time insights and help them meet important deadlines.

Do try this at home:

Here are some other ideas to get you thinking about how you could integrate Quip for Customer 360 at your company:

Track Salesforce maintenance in a custom object

Mandatory Maintenance is a custom object I use internally at CloudKettle to keep track of all the recurring and one-time maintenance tasks as part of org hygiene. To categorize them individually, I have a picklist called Type, with options like Critical Update, Salesforce Release Features, User Deactivation, Weekly Data Backup, and so on. 

To do this, create a lookup relationship between Cases and the Mandatory Maintenance object. If you’re a consultancy, you can also use the Mandatory Maintenance object to manage critical updates for your clients. You can do this by assigning individual Cases to your respective client managers and attaching them to the related Maintenance object. 

Use field merge in Quip 

Merge functionality is a new feature in Quip for Salesforce 360. To leverage this feature, use  [[<object_name>.<field_name>]] to pull Salesforce information into a Quip document. When you add the document to the Maintenance object, it will automatically pick up the name value and populate it in the document. For more information, check out the Quip Merge Documentation. 

Tip: Admins, compare this with the Email template merge fields.  

Try other Quip Live Apps:

Depending on your use case, you can also try using the Salesforce Related List Live App to see the progress of each Salesforce Case within the Quip document. Since it’s a live sync, whenever a case gets closed, it will automatically update the Quip doc. 

Resources

Quip for Customer 360 Implementation

Quip Automation Tools

Collaborate with Quip 

Quip Mail Merge