Question
Kim asked a question about Salesforce:
I need to create a custom button to replace the lead convert button, what we want is to be able to assign a different owner to the account/contact/opportunity and pre-populate the other fields.
Answer
Using the default Lead Conversion button in Salesforce, there is no option to change the owner. The Lead Owner becomes the Owner for the Account, Contact and Opportunity. You can Map Custom Fields – but it is a good idea if the fields are the same fields on the Lead as they will be on the Account, Contact or Opportunity. So that doesn’t answer your question for having either a different owner or pre-population of other fields.
So, a few options for you, depending on which edition of Salesforce you are running (I will talk about Enterprise, as that gives you the most options).
- You could change the Lead to the required Owner before you do the conversion, but that would require that the owner is the same for the Account, Contact and Opportunity that is created.
- You could add a Workflow to change the owner of the Account, Contact or Opportunity after it is created by the Lead Conversion button, but that would be quite limiting – you would have to hard code the owner in there.
- You could have a developer write a custom conversion trigger – but that is probably a bit of overkill.
- You should also think about why you are creating a different owner for the new records and if that is really necessary. Changing owners can create unintended consequences with visibility of records, depending on the permissions that have been applied.
The other option, and the one I think will work best and be the most flexible is the great free App Object Converter. I detailed out how to use Object Converter in my post on Three great free apps for Salesforce Admins and linked to a document I had written on some Tips and Tricks for using Object Converter.
Object Converter will suit this problem well. You can do the following:
- Create a custom button in the Lead form to create the Account, then the Contact, then the Opportunity – as soon as one is created, the next one will fire off.
- The fields for each new object can be customised, and pre-filled in a lot of cases.
- If you can’t use Object Converter to pre-fill the text exactly, then set up a formula field in the Lead to create the content of the field exactly as it will look in the Account, Contact or Opportunity.
- If the owner for each new record are different, add some picklists in the Lead form to get the user to choose who the new owner will be before the lead is converted.
- Use Dynamic Buttons as shown in my previous post also, to ensure the Convert button is not visible until all the requirements for conversion are met.
I hope that helps answer your question Kim – let us know in the comments if it does and how you ended up solving your specific problem.
