Authoring tips and limits

Tips for clean output

• Use tables, not text boxes, for side-by-side layout. Text boxes can shift position when documents are generated, and they stop a template producing a PDF.
• Anchor images In Line with Text rather than floating them.
• Set fixed column widths on tables (Table Layout, then AutoFit, then Fixed Column Width). AutoFit to Contents can make columns jump around.
• Accept or reject all tracked changes before saving. Tracked edits can render as visible text. The add-in warns you if you save with tracked changes.
• Use PNG, JPEG, GIF or BMP pictures if the template must produce a PDF. EMF pictures, which Word writes for most things pasted from another Office app and for many vector logos, cannot go into the PDF. A document can carry up to 50 pictures. See Pictures.
• Keep the file under 10 MB. If it is bigger, compress the images (Picture Format, then Compress Pictures).
• Place conditional text inline within a sentence where you can, so that when it is hidden the surrounding text still reads naturally.

What is supported

• Single fields, parent fields (up to five levels) and built-ins.
• Automatic formatting for currency, percent, date, date-time, checkboxes and picklist labels.
• Repeating tables over child relationships, including one level of nested lists.
• Totals: SUM, COUNT, AVG, MIN and MAX over a related list.
• Conditions (if / else) with =, ≠, ordering, contains and NOT; two clauses joined by AND or OR; “show when blank”; and approval history lists.
• Images from a field that holds a Salesforce File, with an optional size.
• Barcodes and QR codes from a field’s value, Code 128 or QR, with an optional size.
• Tag checking, save-time validation, Generate against any record as Word or PDF, and new versions of existing templates.
• Converting a Conga template in place, under Settings and then Experimental. It reports what it could and could not convert before it writes anything.

Not in this version

• Excel and PowerPoint. Word only for now.
• More than one level of nesting (a list inside a list inside a list).
• PDF for templates with text boxes, custom fonts, floating images or SmartArt. Fix those in Word first; the save results list them.
• Suggested corrections for a tag that does not match. The pane tells you a tag is unresolved and where it is, but does not guess what you meant.

The pane only offers what your org’s installed Sliick Docs version supports, so you are not shown options that will not work.