[SalesForce] way to determine how certain account has been created

As you know Salesforce accounts could be created either as a result of lead conversion or directly, by creating a new account using account creation form (and, accordingly, bypassing lead creation stage). Is there any way to distinguish newly created accounts by its creation type (where creation type is converted lead/manual creation)?

I was thinking about attaching to the account entities a special boolean flag which will be changed in the scope of lead after update trigger, but per this post Lead Conversion Trigger Order of Execution the both (before/after) of Lead-related triggers are being fired at the last order (our tests showing the same behavior), while we need to know it somewhere in the scope of Account After Create trigger.

Accordingly, if such flag is the only approach, then we need to attach some custom coding to the New button, appearing in the account creation form… but this seems to be a really boring solution.

Maybe there a simpler/efficient one?

Thank you in advance!

Best Answer

I can think of two ways of doing this:

Have a checkbox field on the Lead, Was_Lead__c (default: checked) that maps to a field on the Account. This value can be carried over on Lead conversion. If you need to trace it back to the original Lead, you could probably use a formula that provides the Lead's ID field. To configure this, go to Setup | Customize | Leads | Fields and look for the Map Lead Fields button in the Custom Fields section. See http://na14.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/customize_mapleads.htm for more details.
You could do a SOQL query on your closed Leads. The following query will provide you a list of all Accounts and Contacts that originated from a converted Lead. You could filter it on specific Account Ids, if necessary.

Get all converted Accounts and Contacts:

SELECT ConvertedAccountId,ConvertedContactId,Id FROM Lead WHERE Status = 'Qualified'

Find the original Lead for a specific Account:

SELECT Id FROM Lead WHERE ConvertedAccountId = '[AccountId]'

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Lead Conversion Trigger Order of Execution

The usual order of execution detailed at http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/apexcode/Content/apex_triggers_order_of_execution.htm still applies with some special considerations

The Before triggers and validation rules do not fire unless that checkbox is ticked under Customise > Lead > Settings. Note that for orgs created prior to '08 you'll need to contact support to enable this (related answer)

After triggers still always fire irrespective of the above setting

To check if a Lead has been converted and do custom lead conversion logic, the best home for such is the LeadAfter trigger, where you can check

If (trigger.isUpdate && Lead.IsConverted && !trigger.oldmap.get(lead.id).IsConverted)
//do your stuff

Here you will have access to the convertedAccountId, convertedContactId, ConvertedOpportunityId and any OpportunityContactRoles

This is also a good place to re parent any custom related list records from the converted Lead to either of Company or Contact

Just added some debug logs to triggers, and here's the order of execution : (This is with the Enforce Validations and Triggers on Lead Conversion Enabled)

Account Custom Field Mappings
Account Before                 (Fires based on lead settings)
Account After
Contact Custom Field Mappings
Contact Before                 (Fires based on lead settings)
Contact After
Opportunity Field Mappings
Opportunity Before             (Fires based on lead settings)
Opportunity After              (OCR's not available)
Lead Before
Lead After                     (OCR's available)

If the Enforce Validations and Triggers setting is turned off, none of the Before triggers fire. The After triggers however still fire.

[SalesForce] Disable task trigger on lead conversion

You could use a Trigger on Lead that checks for IsConverted == true. Then when Tasks or Events are being triggered for the corresponding Contact you could bypass the trigger in the same transaction. Set a static boolean in a class that can be used to indicate the lead conversion is in progress.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Lead Conversion Trigger Order of Execution

[SalesForce] Disable task trigger on lead conversion

Related Topic