Quip for Customer 360 Data Flow & Troubleshooting Pointers

As part of Salesforce\’s latest Spring \’19 release, you can now embed Quip\’s collaborative documents, spreadsheets, slides, and chat rooms directly within Salesforce objects and records. This powerful addition is the first of its kind and fundamentally changes the way Sales and Service teams get work done together inside the Salesforce Platform.

There are 2 Quip for Customer 360 experiences:
1.Salesforce in Quip (Salesforce live apps, Log Activity, and others)
2.Quip in Salesforce (Quip Lightning components)
Learn More: Quip & Salesforce Integration Summary

1. Salesforce in Quip
Bring live Salesforce data directly into your Quip documents with Salesforce live apps and live Salesforce reports. It’s as easy as @mentioning:

• Salesforce Record
• Salesforce List
• Salesforce Report
• Einstein Analytics (Beta)

The Record and List live apps follow similar data flow patterns and use the Salesforce UI API, while live Salesforce reports use the Salesforce Reports and Dashboards REST API.

The Einstein Analytics (Beta) live app data flow is one-way and goes from Salesforce Analytics to Quip via the Analytics API. Dashboards are displayed using the Einstein Analytics Lightning component via Lightning Out.
2. Quip in Salesforce
Use the Quip Lightning components to link Quip documents to a record, create a document from a template, and see Quip notifications in Salesforce.

Quip Lightning Components

• Quip Associated Documents Component
• Quip Document Component
• Quip Notifications Component

Salesforce Record and List Live Apps

This diagram illustrates the basic pattern of integration and data flow of Salesforce live apps in a Quip document. To bi-directionally sync data to or from the Quip UI, live apps leverage Salesforce’s UI API. This is a modern REST API that abstracts layout complexity by:

• Checking field-level security settings, sharing settings, and permissions
• Making SOQL queries to get record data
• Getting object metadata and theme information
• Getting layout information

This diagram outlines the basic data flow between the Salesforce Record live app and the Salesforce UI API. The Salesforce List live app is analogous to this.

 

Live Salesforce Report:

The basic integration pattern for Salesforce Report leverages the Salesforce Reports and Dashboards REST API, as opposed to the Salesforce UI API used by the Salesforce Record and List live apps.

The Quip integration with Salesforce leverages Quip\’s Automation API which is REST-based. The APIs are used to:

• Search and display quip documents directly inside Salesforce
• Create new Quip documents directly from within the Quip lightning component in Salesforce
• Quip Lightning components are embedded as iFrames inside of a Salesforce Object page. To use Quip inside of Salesforce, you need to first connect your Quip site to your Salesforce org, and then authenticate.
• Data stored in Quip is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• The Quip TLS/HTTPS transport layer uses TLS 1.2, encrypted, and authenticated with AES-128 and using an SHA 256 key exchange/signature algorithm.
• Authentication to Quip uses OAuth 2.0.

Einstein Analytics Live App (Beta):
The data flow of the Einstein Analytics live app is one-way and goes from Salesforce Analytics to Quip via the Analytics API. The source of truth is always the underlying Dashboard on the Analytics Platform. A Quip user can’t modify the data in the Einstein Analytics live app. Einstein Analytics users can modify filters. The Analytics APIs are modern REST APIs that abstract layout complexity by:

• Checking field-level security settings, sharing settings, and permissions
• Sending queries directly to the Analytics platform
• Getting object metadata and theme information

 

Troubleshooting Questions and Responses from salesforce support:

Question from my Quip Consultant (@prashanth Vardhan Polavarapu) :

I\’m unable to fetch the image from the Rich text area field from Salesforce using merge fields in my quip template.

I\’m trying to update the document version whenever a record is updated in salesforce through merge fields. But the record in quip is not updating even though the salesforce record is updated.

Salesforce Support Agent answer:

Unfortunately, our merge fields aren\’t dynamic objects yet on Quip pages.

When data is updated in a Salesforce Record, the only type of object we support that syncs automatically is the Salesforce Record LiveApp.

You\’ll need to re-generate the template again to reflect the new information in your updated record. (viz. generating a template will create a new quip document in your folder)

Cheers!!.