Process of communicating external documents
If you always send documents in the same way, you can automate their dispatch with the Communication of external documents feature. This feature enables you to configure settings in advance, such as the contacts who should receive the documents, the location where the documents should be stored, and the texts to accompany those documents. That way, you can ensure, for example, that a customer who has requested an offer will always automatically be emailed a sales offer including attachments, and that this email will also be sent to the designated customer contacts and to some of your company's employees.
Once you have entered the settings, you can print or send the documents. Afterwards you can see which documents were sent.
You can use this feature for some of the documents in the sales and purchasing processes.
Example
Customer Lopez is a Spanish customer who wants to receive all sales offers by email. For this customer, offers are automatically emailed to the customer's senior purchase employee. The contact for the sales order in question is added as a CC recipient, and so is your own organization's sales employee, so that he will know when the email was sent. Lastly, the person responsible for the offer is added as a BCC recipient, because the customer does not need to know who the person responsible is.
The sender's email address will be the general email address of the Sales department, to ensure that any replies to the email will be received at a central location where there is always someone available to respond to the reply.
The email body will consist of a Spanish version of a standard text. A Spanish custom report with a company-specific layout will be added to the email as an attachment. If any drawings are linked to the sales line, and they have been set to be included, then they will also be added to the email as attachments. The person responsible may occasionally add additional documents as an attachment.
Because the settings indicate that the report must be linked to the sales offer, you can always check afterwards which offers have been sent.