Word Processing Overview

Form Letters are specific documents you have identified to use in different parts of the CRM:

• Donation Thank you's
• Acknowledgment Letters for In-honor/In-memory donations
• Membership Renewals
• End of Year Summary Letters
• Receipts(for Canadian Tax Receipting)
• Mail merges for fundraising or marketing letters.

Some form letters can be printed and mailed to your supporters, and some may be emailed to your supporters. Read about using documents for mail merges in this help article.

Global Change of Word Processors

Salsa CRM interfaces with Google Docs to create and edit documents for donation form letters and for mail merge documents. 

For CRM system administrators, there is a global setting to set Google Docs as the word processor of choice for all users at once. This setting locks the word processing option for all users and can only be turned off by this setting as well. 

Word Processing Permissions

CRM users need to have a Role that includes the data-related permission Word Processing, which controls access to the Manage > Documents > Word Processor screen.

Google Docs Authorization

Google Docs needs to be authorized first before it can be used as the word processor of choice.

Form Letter Workflow

The first step in creating a Form Letter is to download one of our letter templates. You can then upload the file from your local hard drive or network.

NOTE: Document names are limited to 150 characters or less.

The second step is to edit the file to add CRM data variables to your Document, which get replaced with actual data when the form letter is generated.

The next step is to make sure Salsa CRM knows that Document is to be a designated as a Form Letter.

The last step is to use the form letter as it was intended, either as a donation thank you letter (printed or emailed) or as the mail merge document companion to your intended recipient query.

Formatting Documents With Google Docs

For more information on using Google Docs to format your content, see this article on how to change paragraph and font formatting or review this Google Docs Cheat Sheet.

Supported Document Formats

Google Docs' preferred format is in Word DOC or DOCX format, but RTF format is a possibility. For more information on using Google Docs to format your content, see this article on how to change paragraph and font formatting or review this Google Docs Cheat Sheet.

NOTE: Salsa CRM's internal word processor handles HTML and Text Only documents and remains the word processor for all emailed form letters or mail merges in Salsa CRM.

Detailed Workflow

When you start a new document, the file is automatically saved in Google Docs until you save and close the file, at which time, the file is saved to Salsa CRM. This is represented by the left half of the flowchart below.

If you search for an existing file in Salsa CRM to edit (per the right half of the flowchart above) then Salsa CRM transfers a copy of the file to Google Docs, edits and automatically saves your work there in Google Docs. When you Save and Close the file, it updates the file in Salsa CRM, replacing the old version with the new version.

NOTE: Google Docs saves any edits automatically. Google Docs may take a moment or two to save, indicated by "Saving..." in the Google Docs Iframe near the title of the Document. It is recommended that the user wait until that process is complete before saving to the CRM.