Document creation has become faster and more accurate but complex templates still need improvement
What is our primary use case?
One of the main use cases for Conga Composer would be to generate quote documents. We had different types of quote documents in our business process, so we used different kinds of Conga Composer templates for those. Basically, there was one template for the initial quote to give them an idea of how the price structure is going to work. Once they finalize, we have a different template, so when the deal is finalized and everything is in place, they would be able to see how much they would be paying, including the tax. That was the main use case around it. But as I mentioned earlier, we also used it for other custom objects that we had, such as POV, and to generate and print basically the invoices as well.
We used Conga Composer mainly for generating the documents, but we did not use Conga Composer Sign functionality. Instead, we opted for the DocuSign functionality. Once the document generation process was completed by Conga Composer, we integrated DocuSign into our system. Once the document is generated, it moves to a DocuSign envelope. We are able to send the document to different contacts mentioned there. DocuSign was mainly for sending the document to get it signed, and once it comes back signed, we also had an automation in DocuSign that updates some fields at the quote level. It lets us know that the document has been signed and things around that.
What is most valuable?
I would say the process of setting up those templates for different quote stages with Conga Composer is extremely easy. You do not need a lot of development knowledge for that. Even if you are just proficient with Microsoft Word, then you can definitely go ahead and customize this according to your needs. It's very simple and very straightforward. In my 2.5 years of experience with Conga Composer, I can say that it was one of the best document generation tools that I have used in a very long time. For maintenance purposes, it's very easy to maintain the existing templates or to create new ones.
Conga Composer has positively impacted my organization, and I have noticed improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction since using it. Earlier, we used to generate all these documents with the native CPQ functionality that allows you to create templates and generate documents via Visualforce. Those were difficult to maintain because you needed to check the tables and manually enter width and height. They were not very easy or friendly to configure and maintain. With the introduction of Conga Composer, we see a lot of changes on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of requests to customize our templates, and we can meet those customization requests very easily. It offers greater flexibility in terms of formatting and the data we want to show to our customers. This is where it plays a major role, so there has been a lot of improvement, and the efficiency has also improved.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvements for Conga Composer, we did start seeing a lot of requests related to customization, which were initially difficult. As people got to know that it's very easy to customize it, we started to get those more and more, and we saw fewer errors. Earlier, there were many requests to manually adjust the contract value, which was not possible with the CPQ quote documents. With Conga Composer, we can customize it to some level. For exception cases, we can modify the template and generate the contract in a way they want it. While we did not record any metrics, looking at the overall tickets and the reduction in errors we used to see, I think it has improved efficiency by a lot, and our stakeholders agree. However, I would say that despite being easy to set up these templates, there are limitations around looping. Some functionalities break when dealing with large templates, around 30 to 40 pages long. We jumped on their support, but we could not come to a resolution, so we ended up reducing the overall complexity of our template.
I think Conga Composer could improve its adoption for Conga Composer Sign. Right now, the adoption is not very great. People use Conga Composer mainly for document generation and then go separately for DocuSign. To get a better hold of the market, Conga should definitely invest more into Conga Composer Sign.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have 2.5 years of experience with Conga Composer.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would say Conga Composer is mostly stable. In my 2.5 years of experience with it, I faced one or two instances where it was down, likely due to major AWS services being down. The downtime was significantly low, and they were able to restore services quickly, typically within an hour or two. I am happy with that responsiveness and the seriousness they take in their work.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I believe Conga Composer is very scalable. We have around 3,000 to 4,000 internal users, and it handles all that workflow and simultaneous contract generations without any issues.
How are customer service and support?
We found customer support to be helpful, but there were instances where we faced issues with flags that allow you to hide or show tables. In cases where your contract is complex, using many formulas or spans 30 to 40 pages, those flags do not reliably function. When we consulted support, they advised reducing the complexity of our contracts instead of proposing a fix, leading us to ultimately cut back on the number of contract documents.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
As I mentioned earlier, we used to use CPQ quote document functionality, which was native and free with the Revenue Cloud. However, it was not very easy to maintain, requiring developers to create and maintain those templates, which lacked flexibility compared to Conga Composer. Seeing those challenges and the need for more customization, we opted for Conga Composer.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for Conga Composer was not very difficult; it was very easy. As for pricing and licensing, back then we had a very good budget. We looked for a good replacement for the CPQ standard functionality we had to generate documents. We found a very good replacement in Conga Composer and were glad to pay the price they showed back then. It was not very much, but now with a lot of new tools and freeware available, the cost factor becomes a reason to consider whether we should renew our subscription.
What about the implementation team?
Earlier we had a team of CPQ developers maintaining those documents in CPQ, but with the introduction of Conga Composer, certain stakeholders now have knowledge of how Conga Composer works and can go ahead and create and customize templates. Most of the time, they know the requirements themselves and can work on that without needing external help.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Conga Composer, we evaluated DocuSign. However, there were internal questions about whether the initial setup and long-term maintainability would be as easy as with Conga Composer, leading us to decide to go with Conga Composer instead.
What other advice do I have?
I don't think we did anything unique with Conga Composer, but we did use a lot of templates on a single object. As I mentioned, on the quote object itself, we had a couple of templates, including an initial contract template and a finalized contract template. We used it for different templates, and we also built different Conga Composer queries to pull in the data for the merge field that actually gets printed in the document.
I don't think the automation part of Conga Composer is really that good, but the template creation part is extremely easy. It allows me flexibility to send the documents. We have that flexibility for DocuSign, so there's Conga Composer Sign that you can utilize, and it very closely integrates with Conga Composer. Once your document is generated, you can send it via Conga Composer Sign to any customer. The integration part is, of course, very easy and native with Salesforce. Within Salesforce itself, you have the managed package application from where you configure different things about Conga Composer, so it's very easy there as well.
On a scale of one to 10, I would rate Conga Composer a seven. The reason I say seven is that there are a lot of freeware tools right now that offer the same functionality for free. There are many LinkedIn posts talking about people coding their own composers in Salesforce that allow document generation similar to Word templates we have in Conga Composer. That same functionality is being offered for free, although it's not as scalable or foolproof as Conga Composer. There are many new developments in the market, so they should work on the cost aspect.
I have provided enough improvements and given a lot of suggestions, which you can find in my previous answers. There is a lot of scope for improvements there. My overall rating for Conga Composer is seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Efficient Salesforce Document Generation with Consistent, High-ROI Reporting
What do you like best about the product?
We have integrated Conga Composer with Salesforce. What I like best about Conga Composer is how it simplifies document generation and its performance, making it efficient for our team. In our project management setup, we use it for project sizing and estimating different parameters, and it helps us quickly generate structured Word documents like PSR reports. This saves a lot of manual effort and ensures consistency in reporting, giving us the best ROI. It also makes it easier for the team to track expenses and key project metrics in one place, which improves overall visibility and decision-making.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I feel could be improved in Conga Composer is the time it takes to generate reports at times, especially for something like PSR reports, which can feel a bit slower than expected. Also, while customization is possible, I think there’s room to make it more flexible and user-friendly. It would be great if end users had more control to easily enhance the look and feel of the generated reports, so teams can customize them better according to their specific needs without too much effort.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Conga Composer is solving the problem of manually creating complex project sizing reports. These reports pull data from multiple Salesforce objects, so doing it manually would mean going through different datasets and compiling everything, which can easily take hours.
With Conga Composer, this entire process becomes much simpler and faster. Instead of manual effort, we can generate the complete report with just a click of a button. This saves a lot of time for the team and ensures the reports are consistent and accurate.
Efficient Quoting with Room for Setup Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I really like Conga Composer for its ability to make our quoting process efficient. The feature that stands out the most for me is the automation of contract generation. I can set criteria, and it will generate a contract and send it directly for signature.
What do you dislike about the product?
Setup is not beginner friendly, it requires understanding of SOQL queries and deep understanding of relationships. Needed consultants for the initial setup.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I find Conga Composer makes our quoting process efficient and automates contract generation based on criteria, which makes sending them for signatures incredibly easy.
Highly Customizable, Efficient Document Creation
What do you like best about the product?
I use Conga Composer for creating proposals, invoices, and other sales documents from Salesforce. It saves me a ton of time by taking Salesforce info and composing it onto a customizable template to create a presentable document we can send to a customer. I really like the customizability of templates, ease of use, and the ability to send invoices with a signature through Conga Sign. It works quickly without errors and can pull in a ton of specific data depending on what is needed in the template. The document presentation is very nice, and it's great that I can save duplicates in Salesforce and update to show tasks for tracking. The templates let me standardize our sales documents based on specific needs and use cases. We can have different proposals with small changes for certain customer setups without slowing me down because of editing each time. We can build templates that already match our branding and pricing, and it's mostly plug and play after that.
What do you dislike about the product?
The overall template setup could be more streamlined and easier to use from an end-user perspective. It could implement some sort of AI helper that takes clear language and edits the template with the correct code so it pulls certain data from Salesforce. One difficulty we've had is trying to find the correct coding to use that will pull very specific customer data into the template or how to simply change the output file name so it's standardized the way we want.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Conga Composer saves time by creating sales documents from Salesforce info on customizable templates. It's easy to use, allows template customization, and presents documents nicely. It also pulls in specific data and updates Salesforce for tracking efficiently.
Effortless Document Merging with Conga Composer
What do you like best about the product?
I like that Conga Composer is very simple and requires very little training. The setup is easy. I particularly value the general merge function that allows me to go in and edit my templates easily.
What do you dislike about the product?
I wish we could have better-looking AI templates to make documents more professional instead of just using Word documents. It would be great if there was a way to create those directly on Conga.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Conga Composer to merge documents like agreements and purchase orders, eliminating manual data entry and duplicate work.
Stay away if compliance is important
What do you like best about the product?
When you save the proposals it is easy to switch to a more thrustworthy vendor.
What do you dislike about the product?
If you take data integrity seriously, I would strongly advise against using this company.
During the years we used their software, we encountered multiple instances where data in proposals was incorrect. One particularly serious issue occurred when we sent out a data processing agreement to all our customers. The PDF download showed completely different list numbers than those displayed in the signing interface (see screenshot). This made us look extremely unprofessional. Support was not helpful, stating they “could not change signed documents.” When we argued that the PDF should accurately reflect what was actually signed, our concerns were simply ignored.
In another case, after a system update, the currency in our documents was automatically changed from euros to dollars — resulting in proposals showing 15% less revenue. Fortunately, our customers were understanding and agreed to sign corrected documents.
We also experienced issues with the Salesforce integration, where PDFs were not properly synced. Again, support offered no real solution, and we had to manually download hundreds of documents ourselves.
When we decided to switch platforms, we attempted to bulk download all contracts with their ‘bulk download feature’. The number of downloaded files matched the number of offers, but all PDFs turned out to be duplicates of the same document. We only discovered this when a customer requested a copy of their contract during the transition period. When we raised this with support, their response was simply that we “shouldn’t use that feature.”
We ultimately moved to PandaDoc, which has been a huge relief. Our proposals look more professional, editing is smoother, the software is more affordable, and onboarding was completed within a week. In hindsight, we should have switched much earlier.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It makes proposals from our Salesforce data.
