Sending Quotes

You are not alone Norm Bonenfant 

I built a custom solution based on PDF Manager back in v6.x but it is getting harder and harder to maintain.

We are an on-site customer and use PDF manager to build templates for pieces of our documents. 

I use PDF Manager to compose/store the templates and combine multiple templates into one "printable" document based on smarty variables so we can include/exclude additional information from our Quotes and custom contracts based on the related products that are added etc...

I work in the HTML not the WYSIWYG which adds all sorts of bits we don't want and edit things I don't want edited (major issues in v12). I had to override some core functions to keep my code working while I look for an alternative, and I expect that to get worse with time as Sugar locks things down more and more for security reasons.
I use a custom CSS to format the document, wkhtmltopdf to convert it to pdf and qpdf (originally I was using pdftk) to selectively lock text but keep the signature blocks editable. 

However, wkhtmltopdf is not supported anymore, we can't install it on new Rocky Linux servers.
Not long ago I needed to replace pdftk with qpdf.
And the fact that Sugar has moved to DocuSign instead of updating PDFManager, strongly suggest, in my opinion,  that PDFManager is on the way out. It makes no sense from a software development standpoint to keep maintaining both.

All his to say that I need to find an alternative I can live with, and very soon.

At the Developer Office hours someone suggested looking into Conga or "Expert Doc" and maybe there is something on Sugar Outfitters that supports he needs here...
In my world, proposing we get another subscription for yet another piece of software to cater to document printing is absurd, I'm still doing research and I'll be interested in what you find and what others have to say.

FrancescaS

Hello Norm Bonenfant and Francesca Shiekh 

TLDR: In general, no single solution does everything you need/want, the way you need/want.

In my view you have 3 either/or options depending on budget and level of outcome wanted:

1. Adapt and live with the consequences of adapting - suboptimal outcomes and service - worse outcome, lowest cost
2. Customise/extend and live with those consequences - high development, resources and maintenance costs - good outcome, most likely the highest total cost of ownership, low future flexibility
3. Buy multiple applications that are amazing at specific things, and interconnect them together - higher software cost, maybe development and maintenance - great outcome, could compare with #2 in terms of TCO or even lower TCO, business flexibility to swap solutions as better vendors establish

Business leaders are edging towards #3 from #2 nowadays based on my experience

This approach can apply also to delivering efficient and beautiful proposals to your customers.

In the past what I have done is build an application accessible from my customers.

Sellers would simply send customers a unique link instead of sending them a quote (or invoice) which would retrieve the latest quote data for that unique url/record in Sugar.

This would give us all sorts of advantages including:

• Comprehensive tracking of how the prospects/customers interacted with your proposals, time spent, open rate etc
• Ability to update the CRM based on their actions
• Ability to pay via credit card if they wanted to do so
• Ability to display/print the information the way you want, being a web page

That's a possibility, which has the downsides of high initial investment and ongoing maintenance for changes.

Another more recent alternative, is to leverage a proper CPQ (configure price quote) solution on top of the CRM.

This approach not only guides your sellers to create proposals faster, which are valid, and follow all your complex business rules (eg: products dependencies, discount ranges, approvals, conditional pricing etc).

This approach reduces mistakes, reduces back and forth, reduces clunkiness, reduces the time it takes for sellers to create quotes based on what they are trying to sell.

Some vendors even provide the ability to view the proposal online, sign it and have the full approval engine.

The vendor I have in mind unfortunately no longer has an integration with Sugar, but I am sure we could overcome that (I am their partner and I focus on integrations and I know Sugar inside out).

Unfortunately Francesca Shiekh I don't think you will find a software that does everything you want. Even the giants keep purchasing other companies and bolt them together the best they can. And they come with hefty price tags and implementations.

Have you considered looking into a modern iPaaS (integration platform)? A platform that allows you to "glue" multiple systems together to achieve a business objective and to reach further your unicity in the marketplace for your customers in terms of experience and service.

Not just integrate systems, not just automate, but orchestrate multiple systems together to achieve your specific business outcome and process, end to end.

The fact is that it is extremely rare to find a single solution that does everything your business needs the way your business needs it to.

With iPaaS you get much closer to that.

Have a read at this article I wrote and see if it resonates.

All the best!

Hello Norm Bonenfant ,

Just wondering in what cases Doc Merge "comments not respecting their order"?

I did a couple of Doc Merge Templates using this example: https://sugarclub.sugarcrm.com/explore/help-forums/enterprise-professional/f/enterprise-professional-questions/6356/docmerge---quotes-module---how-to-handle-comment-line-with-quoted-line-items/31200

and haven't bumped into an issue with the comments order (yet?)

I would love to know how you are doing it. Would you be able to share the doc merge template?
When I try that code that Alex posted, I get this error, "Invalid closing tag on #product_bundle_items".

In fact, in talking to Sugar about it, they verified that the bug still exists and they are continuing to work on it. 

sure, attaching - it's not a real Quote Template, just checked with it whether Quotes Comments works

As per the error "Invalid closing tag on #product_bundle_items". - if you copy-paste the example from the SugarClub post, I would recommend selecting 'Do not check spelling or grammar' (in MS Word) and then saving the document, at least that was what I did.

Generally based on my experience: before saving the final version of the Document to upload as the template, remove any grammar/spelling checks from MS Word, because Word seems to add some hidden tags that cannot be parsed correctly by DocMerge and leads to unexpected errors.

You are absolutely the best!!! This is HUGE!!!