Workaround for the Quip Folder Item Limit

Over the last few months, we’ve received reports from customers about Quip not performing as expected when folders contain a large number of items. We understand that consistent performance is critical to your business. With that in mind, we’ve identified the root cause of issue and instituted new limits on folders to address it. We now recommend that you include no more than 1,000 documents, spreadsheets, and subfolders per folder, and that your folders contain 1,000 members or less.

If one or more of your folders currently exceeds this limit and you primarily navigate folders and create Quip documents from Salesforce, we recommend that you use private folders. Specifically, we recommend that you save your documents in private folders, turn on link sharing for the documents, and use Salesforce automation to attach the documents to records. Private folders are not subject to the new folder item limit.

Example

For example, consider an automation process that adds a Quip document based on a template to each new case your users create. The following steps outline how to create the automation process in Flow Builder without using Quip folders. Anyone with the link can have a default access and that can be set to "edit". This way, we can use Salesforce as a primary way for navigation and organization for Quip documents.

1. Create a record-triggered Flow:
   1. In Setup, enter Flow in the Quick Find box.
   2. Click New Flow.
   3. Select Record-Triggered Flow, and click Create.
2. Configure the Flow to run when a user creates a Case object:
   1. In the Object dropdown of the Configure Start dialog box, select Case.
   2. In the Trigger the Flow When: Field, select A record is created.
   3. Click Done.
3. Create an input variable for the case to attach the Quip document to:
   1. In the Manager pane of Flow Builder, click New Resource.
   2. In the New Resource dialog box, click Variable, and provide an API name.
   3. In the Data Type field, select Record.
   4. In the Object field, select Case.

   5. Select Available for input, and click Done.

4. Create an output variable for the link to the document you attach to the case:
   1. In the Manager pane of Flow Builder, click New Resource.
   2. In the New Resource dialog box, click Variable, and provide an API name.
   3. In the Data Type field, select Text.

   4. Select Available for input and Available for output, and click Done.

5. Add the Copy Document Quip invocable action to the Flow:
   1. Click the Add Element icon and select Action.
   2. In the New Action dialog box, select Quip, and search for the Copy Document action.
   3. In the Document URL field, paste the URL of the Quip template from your Quip Site that you'd like to attach to each new case.
   4. To enable link sharing for the document, turn on Company Link Access. Anyone with the link has the default access level that you specify, for example, edit.

   5. In the Source Record ID field, type {!Case.Id}.

   6. Expand the Advanced section and fill in the Document Link field with the API name of the output variable you created.

   7. Click Done.

6. Add the Update Records element to the Flow:
   1. In the New Update Records dialog box, use the Case Id to filter for cases.
   2. In the Set Field Values for the Case Record section, specify the Quip document URL as the Field and the output variable you created as the Value.

   3. Click Done.

7. Add the Attach Quip Document to Record invocable action to the Flow:
   1. Click the Add Element icon and select Action.
   2. In the New Action dialog box, select Quip, and search for the Attach Quip Document to Record action.
   3. In the Document URL field, type the API name of the output variable you created, for example, {!casedocumentlink}.

   4. In the Salesforce Record ID field, type {!Record.Id}.

8. Save and activate your Flow.

   1. 

9. Test your Flow by creating a case in Salesforce or the API.

Quip Index Document: 

As an additional option, if you use automation to create and manage Quip folders, another recommendation to manage your content is by creating an Index document. An Index document is any Quip document that centralizes and stores the sharable URLs of other Quip documents by using Flow or Quip's API calls to add new documents to the Index document. If you link to a new document in an Index document, only users that join or participate in that specific document can search for that new content in their Quip search. For users that haven’t joined the document by being added to it through the Share dialogue or added through Flow or Automation, the new document won’t appear in Quip search results. They can only access it with the document URL from the Index document, and may require users to copy and paste the URL from the Index document into their browser. 

The Index document solution does not introduce a new search related feature, but highlights a method to list newly created document URLs so that users of your site are able to immediately find the document link within the Index document. 

FAQ's:

• We recommend that all folders, except Private Folders, contain in total 1,000 documents, spreadsheets and/or sub-folders, and 1,000 members or less.
  • If you have gone over this limit, Users can start to experience performance issues such as; you may not be able to edit documents, you may not be able to tag users within your documents, and you may not be able to use the insert button to add live apps to your document. 
• If you have more than 1,000 contents within a folder, we recommend creating a new folder and separating the contents between the two (or more) folders to ensure you do not run into performance issues. 
• If you have configured Flow to generate documents within a specific folder, we recommend reviewing the folders you are adding contents to, to stay within the 1k limit. 
  • We recommend regularly updating your Flow to vary the folder contents are being added into. 
• If you have questions around how to better structure your folders and content within Quip with this limitation, please reach out to your Salesforce Account Executive for additional support. 
• For the index document to be effective, your Quip site users must use the index document to search for other documents rather than relying on folders or Quip search.
  • When searching, we're referring to the user using the native CMD+F to search for the document title or link within the Index document.
• Every document linked to an index document must have link-sharing turned on, to allow your site members to search in the index document and open the linked document.
• Any user with access to the document URLs can open the corresponding documents.
• When users become members of linked documents via “join” or “participate” by editing or commenting in the document, they’ll see the documents in their search results.
  
  • If you would like to lock down sharing for the index document or to adjust further customizations, please contact your Account Executive or Customer Success Manager for further assistance. You can also leverage the Quip Flow Actions or the Quip API based on your process.