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This blog post covers the basic part of Functional and Technical aspects while doing the first setup as CPQ administrator with configuration access.

As promised in first blog post (link: https://blogs.sap.com/2019/06/24/sales-cloud-callidus-cpq-administrative-essentialstroubleshooting-w...), I will be covering following topics in part 2:

  1. Client specific Quotation Document Generation Template (Simple/Multiple Section)

  2. Status and Approval process along with Post Action


Let's start.

  1. Quotation Document Generation:


Once Agent has configured and added the required products in Cart and saved the Contract; This feature of CPQ allows You to generate a Quote as a Document which is highly customized as per Client requirement. It is more like a proposal with all details of Configured product(with pricing), Quote info like Terms and Conditions, Cover letter(used to quick brief about Company), Shipment dates, Custom fields etc.

The Generated document can be customized with Client specific template (along with Logo, Branding, Signature) which ensure that the Customer receive it as Personal quotation addressing him/her with First name/Last name.

You can generate a quote by clicking the “Generate Documents” action. To be able to see and trigger this action, it must be allowed for the status of the quote and the permissions must be given to the user group to which you belong.

It means You can only generate documents if you have permission assigned to your user ID and Permission Group is used along with “Status” of the Contract to enable the “Generate Document” action (we will cover more in next point about the settings to do so)

Once document is generated, Sales agent use to send that as attachment to the Customer via e-mail.

So, the Customer receive that personalized quotation with complete info including product details and a way to accept/reject that Quotation.

Please note: when CPQ is used in integration with C4C Sales, Quotation will have a C4C Service email id for e.g cod.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.mail.crm.ondemand.com (or you can customize it as Sales@SalesCompany.com )to accept/reject  the Quotation.

Whenever Customer accept/reject the Quote, he/she use the above email id to communicate which ultimately generate a Service Ticket back to C4C and assign that Ticket to the employee/agent who is “Employee Responsible” for this Quotation.

Agent get notification of the outcome and he/she process that Accepted/Rejected Quote accordingly as per Sales Cycle.

The view in Responsive UI for Agent to use this functionality is as follows:



When you click on “Generate Documents” highlighted in Yellow above, it brings you to next screen as follows:



Now, let’s talk about the Configuration steps to have above setup in the CPQ system. I will also include settings  till sending that document template as an e-mail to customer in generated format which process is divided into three Parts:

  1. Choose Document Generation Templates

  2. Customize

  3. Download Document and send E-mail


I will be more focused on First process as rest two are default features of CPQ

Lets’ discuss how to customize document generation template.

Path: Go to Setup>Quotes>Document Generation Template

Step1: Apart from Language, chose default Output Format:



For the ease of demo, I have selected English as language and Word file (.docx) as default output.

Please note for advance configurations, For each template you can specify who and under which conditions can override default format. Also you can send Quotation in Customer Language by default.This is not covered in this blog post.

Step 2: Output Templates:

This step is required to get main document generated with product/price and rest info which were configured in saved quotation.

SAP has provided the standard templates which can be edited to adjust it as per Client requirement.

Because the edit is as simple as editing a word file, it is recommended to use the template provided by SAP unless you are advance CPQ user with scripting knowledge. So, I will not use the "Add New Template" but use the existing standard templates.



For this blog post purpose, let’s take one template named as “Quote” and customize  it with Client requirements.

>Click on Edit (Pencil) button:



Adjust the Name/Description*

Used As : Select Simple Template.

Will explain later in the blog post when to select Multi-section Template*.

You do not need to delete the existing template as this can be simply controlled by “Versioning” to track the changes in templates and by activating one version at one time, You can ensure that only the customize template is generating output.

>Click on Download in any one Row:



>Once downloaded in local machine, open that template file and start editing it like a word file

The downloaded file will have all generic formulas in place as below:





Quotation summary page will look like:



Please note that all values you can see under <<..>> are CT2 Tags used script attached and will fetch those details from the Quotation/Customer/User/Sales Agent data. You can add more fields by scripting (not part of this blog post) including Custom Fields.

>So carefully edit the content/pics/logo/header/footer as per your client requirement and save it with appropriate version/name in your local machine.

>Once template is final, Click on “Add New Document” and upload the customized word template.



>Once uploaded, Click on “Activate” so that newly created template version is active only.



>Now go to “Visibility Permission” to control who can see/use this template.

This is controlled via Permission Group which is assigned under User data.



Either you can mark it visible to all Permission Group (I have used that for blog post) as above or You have following options:



Step 3: Section Templates:

This is optional step to add more sections in the output template created in Step 2. Adding Section template will also follow the same process as above.

In a business scenario where Company wants to send some Terms and Conditions, Easy Pay/Finance Options/ Company quick introduction as part of Quotation, You can use this step to develop those template and in step 2 select Used as “Multi-select   template”

These section templates can be added in Output Template “Sections” tab to use.



This concluded the template part. Now your customized template is ready to be used in Quotations.

2. Status and Approval process along with Post Action

Status Management is itself a broad topic, so I will keep this blog post focused on what need to be configured to ensure that You can use the above configured Quotation template and send it via email.

We are considering a Business scenario here where the Sales Agent send the Quotation which is in initial status as “Draft/Preparing” to “Sent for Approval” and once it is “Approved” by Supervisor/Manager, Sales agent is processing that approved Quotation.

Agent will create the quotation document (as per defined template) and send it to Customer as attachment.

Step 1: Defining Status:

Define all required or above mention Status in the system (most of it are available as standard).

Make sure one Status has “Default” marking. System will not allow to have no default status.

This status is the default status when quotation is created.



Step 2: Define Actions:

Define required action if required ones are not available as part of standard. I am not defining any one as standard is meeting the business scenario here.



Step 3: Define Workflow:

Now, We will use the above defined Status and Actions to adjust the standard Workflow present in the system. Although workflow is another widely used feature, for this blog post, I will ensure that I have defined/added the combination of newly defined Status and Action.

For that, let’s go to “Approved” status and add Action “Generate Documents” by clicking on + or edit.





Which will result into:



 

Please note that in above screen, Under “Preparing” status there is no action assigned as “Generate Documents”. This ensure that unless the Quotation status is “Approved” the Post action Tab “Generate Documents” will not be available in Quotation Screen.

Step 4: Workflow Permissions:

Last step is to ensure that Your user ID has access to execute the Document Generation Action.

As most of the user IDs are grouped together as User Group, You have to got to Workflow Permissions and ensure that Your user group is assigned under required action.





I have used + or edit pencil button to add my user group which is “Sales”.



Please note I have not given the path of above/few mentioned configuration as you can simply search it in “MENU” SEARCH field in CPQ as Administrator.



Now, you can see and generate document once Quotation is approved. This concludes the required configuration as administrator.

Let's replicate the scenario now with updated configuration.

I will go now to Quotations, approve one and show you the Document Generated as per Customized template; sent as an e-mail to Customer.



If I open this Quote, I can see following options not “Generate Documents”:



Now, I will manually change the status of this Quote as “Approved”. In business case, Sales Manager gets a notification to approve the mail, he/she opens it to see the details and approve it.



The moment quote get approved, You can see the “Generate Documents” now.

If you click on “Generate Document” You will have following options which is mentioned in start of this blog post. This Quotation document will fetch all field data configured in template from Quotation (like Customer Name/e-mail, Pricing, Shipment details, Custom fields etc)



I will choose Quote template as configured earlier, not others (You can customize if you do not want to see any other options if you have used Single Section Document as Output).

You can preview it before proceeding. Click on Create as Word and Once finalize, You can proceed with next tab “Customize”. It is not applicable in our case as we have used Single Section Output.

Then finally go to “Download Document and Send Email”



Click on Send mail to complete the process.

If you download and open the Quote document, You can see that the document is using your word file as template and all added Products/Prices are in place along with other info/custom fields etc.



You can see Generated Documents for a Quotation  by opening it and going to “Documents” section.

Also if you want, you can download it or delete it(authorization given) if not required.



In attachment you can see all Cover letters, Terms and Conditions if Multi-section Output template is used.

This concludes this quite long blog post,  I am open for any question/correction/feedback. Feel free to comment/like.

Keep sharing and growing…!!!

BR,

Mukesh Kumar
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