Users / Admins

Introduction to Quip

By Helen Garcia

Quip is like a combination of Slack and Google docs rolled into one. For simplicity it’s a Word Processing app, but a pretty cool one at that, especially the ways it can be used and how it integrates with your Salesforce org. Having used Quip myself, I can certainly vouch that it’s user friendly, intuitive and feels familiar, certainly if you are used to G Suite.

Salesforce acquired Quip just before Dreamforce’17 for $750 million, and A ton has happened since then though and especially now Salesforce is involved! If you’re new to Quip, or worried about your data being protected, or just wanting to know more when it comes to document sharing and team collaboration with Salesforce, then I hope this post will help point you in the right direction.

First, let’s start with looking at what Quip can do, then dive into Quip for users and its security features, before checking out some of the integration and app features that we know you will geek out over!

What Does Quip Do?

Quip is like a combination of Slack and Google docs rolled into one. It’s not only great on the desktop but surpasses most iPhone and tablet cloud apps too…as far as we are concerned. Noting the 2016 version of “Introducing Quip” was written on an iPhone, nice one Richard Dearn.

Where Quip really gets its superpowers … is the way all of the entities work seamlessly together and that has only grown over the years. So let’s dive right in and explore some of these new features from the past couple of years as we revisit the Introduction to Quip!

Quip for Users

Live Paste

Let’s start with the exotic stuff … Live paste is basically copy and paste on steroids. If you need to reflect the same information in more than one document and your memory is shady, then live paste’s your friend. Simply copy the information needed to other Quip documents, right click and ‘live paste’ it in. Everytime the source Quip document is updated, all Quip docs linked are too. Auditing has never been so easy.

Quip Chat

Adding comments to docs is so 2019. Quip has brought to us not only a live comment stream but emojis too. Track all interactions and conversations in the sidebar of your Quip document, and express through emoji exactly how you feel. Benefits of this, is faster feedback loops, no email waste or loss of understanding and basic efficiency. Just because we are distributed it doesn’t mean our documents should be dispersed and disorderly.

Quip Slides

A collaborative slide deck that enables you to have real time feedback and engagement insight from your team, live data feeds from Quip Spreadsheets (that can be integrated into Salesforce) and Feedback Prompts that work similar to comments in google docs, but after it’s visited the sweet shop. And that for us is the real differentiator.

Feedback Prompts allow you not only to drive feedback soon by tagging your team, or seeing who’s engaged there and then, but also through polling! Ask questions and vote via poll for instant answers, no need to have another ‘options meeting’ to discuss the same ideas!

Quip Security Features

Quip Shield

With great power comes great responsibility. And that’s where Quip Shield comes to protect you, me, organisations and any other genuine nomad. We don’t create Quip documents for a laugh, we have likely have sensitive information in there about us, our teams, our organisation, our customers organisation, any anything else your legal team comes up with. This is where Antivirus Scanning, Enterprise Key Management (EKM) and Event Monitoring comes in, three core elements that make up Quips new protective shield. Allowing you and your organisation to real time Quip login data, auto virus scans and create, manage, encrypt security keys with EKM and control access to your Quip documents.

Quip Integration & Apps

Data Integration

These features were brought to us by Winter’20 Release, so nice and fresh out of the box. Don’t forget though that you must ensure that your Salesforce Org and Quip documents are talking, simply by going to the folder in Quip and clicking ‘manage Salesforce Org’ in the bottom left. Once that’s done, we are talking; List Views, Log A Call and Live Report Enhancements. Let’s check out Log A Call first.

Log A Call

At the top of your Quip document you’ll see a familiar cloud icon, click and select ‘Log A Call’.

You’ll then be taken through some easy steps in order to allocate:

RelatedTo → Subject → Notes → ContactName

Enabling you to be customer focused whilst on a call, and after, not having to flick between your Salesforce org and Quip document. Reducing context switches and therefore increasing productivity! Nice and easy, small changes to big value.

Live Report Enhancements

It’s as easy as tagging in other media with @[mention]. Beyond the use of a person’s name, it’s also a function that is used to get data, check it out:

@Report → SearchReport → Custom filter options → Select ‘Live Data’ or ‘Spreadsheet’

The data is now embedded from Salesforce in your Quip document. The greatest bit, is that if you choose ‘Live Data’, it’s live! No need to continuously go back, copy and paste the updated reports, and those who can are able just to get the live data straight from accessing your Quip doc. No more back and forth emails on the latest data.

Related Lists

Again it’s all about @mentioning ‘Lists’, no news there.

@List → SelectList → ObjectListView

And if you need the fields displayed differently, of course you have the ability to do this too, right after the select list view.

By embedding we also mean inline editing and syncing too, and we are talking bi-directional. Nice.

Click the edit pencil icon → Update the info → Save to Salesforce

Just a quick note, that you can’t create a record through Quip just yet using the RelatedList but why not just use the ‘New Task’ functionality:

It’s as easy as that, no need to trawl through your Salesforce org to find the account, related list and then risk copy and past errors. Value brought in; saving time, money and brain power. And of course, it’s all in real time, just sync or refresh and your data is up to date!

Live Deal Feeds

Just as we’ve seen in Live Reports Enhancements, Quip’s Live Deal Feed

took this and injected it with sugar. By using Live Deal Feeds you can have all your sales data in one place, easily downloaded from Salesforce Appexchange.

Live Deal Feed alerts you when a deal is closing or if it’s being pushed out. So when you’re coming to the end of the quarter you can be kept well informed on how your sales team is doing and send off messages of congratulations, or motivation, to keep them at the pace your organisation needs!

Summary

If you’re new to Quip or just getting worried about your data being protected or just wanting to know more when it comes to document sharing and team collaboration, then we hope this helped explain some of why Quip is a great app to integrate with your Salesforce org.  We can certainly vouch that it’s user friendly, intuitive and feels familiar, certainly if you are used to G Suite.

Don’t just take our word for it, check it out yourself, trial it for free. See the benefits, reap the benefits! Bring value to your teams, customers and organisations through real time data and collaborative tools.

The Author

Helen Garcia

Helen is an Advanced Certified Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Professional Coach, with a deep-rooted understanding of the scrum framework and a passion for agile values and principles.

Comments:

    Chris Valdivia
    November 07, 2016 4:46 pm
    "to be honest it was mainly because they were giving away t-shirts and we all love swag". Great honest quote!! :-D
    Christy
    November 20, 2016 4:18 am
    It's a joy to find soenome who can think like that

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