How to build a one-click process with DocuSign for Salesforce

In my previous post I mentioned how you can use DocuSign to boost your sales pipeline and I also promised I'd focus on DocuSign and the many features it has to empower your organisation.

Do you use Salesforce in your organisation and would like to know how to integrate your DocuSign account with Salesforce to close more deals faster by giving your users the luxury of a "one-click process"?

Then read on, you're in the right place...

Here are some of the benefits of integrating DocuSign with Salesforce:

Save time on your contract creation.
Close deals faster by sending the documents to the right people from anywhere on any device with one-click.
Save time by creating templates for your contracts and documents that are used frequently which also reduces the re-keying errors.
Leverage Salesforce data to populate the documents automatically and get them signed directly from Salesforce by pressing a button on the record in Salesforce.

In this post I will outline the tools you need to make the integration happen as well as a basic scenario for an end-to-end process which can be used as a foundation for other scenarios that you would like to implement.

The prerequisites

DocuSign Enterprise edition. This edition will give you API access which is required for the integration. If you would like to upgrade your account, contactDocuSign and they will assist you with the process.
Salesforce Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, or Developer edition.
A document merging app in Salesforce such as Conga or Drawloop. This is totally up to you, but I will be using Conga in this example. Both of these tools are paid for apps and you can check Conga prices here.
DocuSign for Salesforce app which can be installed from Salesforce AppExchange here.

Once you have these 4 items in place we can start...

Scenario for this tutorial

The proposal with the customer and product details will be emailed to the customer from the opportunity record in Salesforce. This is a one-click process and emails the proposal to the first contact role on the opportunity for eSignature.

I downloaded a template from Conga template library for this tutorial.

As I mentioned earlier you can use this scenario as a base and develop on it for your specific needs.

Step 1/5: Connect DocuSign to Salesforce

You will need to connect your Salesforce instance to your DocuSign using an integration user. This user is a user with admin rights (API access) and preferably with Password Never Expires option on their profile. You can either use one of the existing admin users for this purpose or allocate a specific user for your integration.

This is a very easy process and you can follow the steps outlined in DocuSign for Salesforce administration guide. The PDF guide can be downloaded here.

Step 2/5: Assign DocuSign user licenses to Salesforce users

This step is to define which Salesforce users are allowed to use DocuSign to send documents out for eSignature. You will first need to purchase the number of required licenses from DocuSign.

My preference is to do this within Salesforce:

Click the DocuSign Admin tab
Click the Users tab on the left hand menu
Select the users that you would like to activate in your Salesforce
Click Add Users button

Step 3/5: Update Connect settings in DocuSign

You will need to complete this for basic publishing back into Salesforce, otherwise your completed documents will not return to Salesforce.

Log into the DocuSign account as an administrator
Click the profile and then Preferences in the top right-hand side of the screen
Under Account Administration, click Connect
Click the Salesforce section
Under System Settings make sure Allow Publish Salesforce is selected
Under Sender Selectable items, select all the Salesforce objects (you may change this to suit your needs)
Under Select Users to Integrate, select the users that are allowed to push the completed/signed documents back to Salesforce

Step 4/5: Prepare and upload the template

As mentioned above, I downloaded an existing template from the Conga template library to use here.

The trick here is to place the automatic DocuSign anchor tags to your template and the hide them by changing the font colour to white. Conga will magically render the DocuSign tags before it sends them out.

The template I'm using is based on Conga Release 8 so you will need to make sure that your Conga version matches this otherwise the template will not work. The sample template I've used can be downloaded here.

Once your template is ready you will need to upload it under the Conga Template tab in Salesforce. You should only have one document uploaded per Conga Template record.

Step 5/5: Create the button on the Opportunity object in Salesforce

You can take advantage of a range of DocuSign Parameters that conga offers in your custom button. Refer to Conga knowledge base here.

To create the button in Salesforce:

Go to Setup > Customise > Opportunities > Buttons, Links and Actions
Click New Button or Link
Add an appropriate name for the button
Select Detail Page Button
Add the code to your button - here is the code the I have used and you need to replace the Template ID with the ID of your Conga Template record that you created under step 4/5
Click Save
Add the button to your Opportunity Page Layouts

How to track the data?

All the envelopes can be tracked on the relevant records and in this case on the opportunity record under the DocuSign Status related list.You can also configure this integration to capture the signed documents under the relevant envelope record in Salesforce.

The beauty about this integration is once you send your documents out for signature, the connection that you have already built will take care of the tracking information in Salesforce. You can use Salesforce out of the box reports to report on the status of the envelopes that you send out.