Last Updated on December 2, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta

Big Idea or Enduring Question:

• How can you map the lead source to the account source during the lead conversion?

A lead in a marketing context, is a potential sales contact, an individual or organization that expresses an interest in your products or services. Leads are typically captured through the referral of an existing customer, or direct through the company website (Using web-to-lead), etc. Usually, leads are converted when they have been identified as qualified sales prospects.

During conversion, the information from the standard lead fields appears in standard fields for contact, account, and opportunity records. A lead source is mapped to contact and opportunity lead source. It means the standard Lead Source field on the Lead object is not mapped automatically to the Account Source field on the Account object when converting a lead.

Objectives:

This blog post will help us to understand the following

• Map lead field to multiple objects fields (account, contact, or opportunity)during lead conversion 
• How you can update the converted account fields 

Business Use case

Pamela Kline is working as a System administrator at Universal Containers (UC). She has received a requirement from the management to auto-populate the Account Source field on the Account object from the Lead Source field on the Lead object when an account is created from lead conversion.

Automation Champion Approach (I-do):

There are a few possible solutions for the above business scenario. We will use the Process Builder to solve the requirement without creating custom fields. 

Before discussing the solution, let me show you a diagram of a Process Flow at a high level. Please spend a few minutes to go through the following Flow diagram and understand it.

Let’s begin building this automation process.

Guided Practice (We-do):

There are 4 steps to solve Pamela’s business requirement using Process Builder. We must: 

1. Define process properties
2. Define evaluation criteria
3. Define process criteria
4. Add action – update records

Step 1: Define Process Properties

1. Click Setup.
2. In the Quick Find box, type Process Builder.
3. Select Process Builder, then click New.
4. Name the Process and click the Tab button. The API Name will populate. 
5. As a best practice, always input a description. 
6. The process starts when A record changes.
7. Click Save.

Step 2: Define Evaluation Criteria

1. Click on the Add Object node to begin selecting the evaluation criteria.
2. Select the Lead object from the dropdown list.
3. Start the process when a record is created or edited.
4. Click Save.

Step 3: Define Process Criteria

1. Click the Add Criteria node to begin defining the process criteria.
2. Name the criteria.
3. The criteria should execute actions when the conditions are met.
4. Set Conditions
   1. Row 1
      1. Field: Lead | IsConverted
      2. Operator: Equals
      3. Type: Boolean
      4. Value: True
5. Select All of the conditions are met (AND). 
6. Click Advanced. 
7. Select Yes to execute the actions only when specified changes are made to the record.
8. Click Save.

The reason why we would select the Yes checkbox for the question — Do you want to execute the actions only when specified changes are made to the record? — is to allow the Process Builder to execute the actions only if the record meets the criteria now, but the values that the record had immediately before it was saved didn’t meet the criteria. This means that these actions won’t be executed when irrelevant changes are made.

Step 4: Add Action – Update Records

1. Below Immediate Actions, click Add Action.
2. For Action Type, select Update Records. 
3. Name the action.
4. Select the option Select a record related to the Lead record type. 
   1. Select the Converted Account ID record type. 
5. The criteria for updating records should be Updated records meet all conditions.
6. Filter the records you update based on these conditions
   1. Row 1
      1. Field: Created Date
      2. Operator: Equals
      3. Type: Field Reference
      4. Value: Lead | Converted Date
7. Set new field values for the records you update: 
   1. Row 1:
      1. Field: Account Source
      2. Type: Field Reference
      3. Value: Lead | Lead Source
8. Click Save.

In the end, Pamela’s Process will look like the following screenshot:

Almost there! Once everything looks good, click the Activate button. 

Note:- Before you activate your process, you will want to make sure that you have assigned data in the correct format because Process Builder obeys validation rules. If some fields are required by using validation rules, then make sure you have added those fields. Conversely, if some fields are required on the page layout, you can ignore those fields. 

Proof of Concept

Now onwards, if a business user converts a lead, then Process Builder will automatically populate lead source on account from the converted lead. 

1. Navigate to the Lead tab, identify the Lead record and click on Lead Name to open the record detail page, as shown in the following screenshot:
2. Now convert the Lead. Now open the newly created account record and verify the Lead Source.

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!  

What is one thing you learned from this post? How do you envision applying this new knowledge in the real world? 

Let me know by Tweeting me at @automationchamp, or find me on LinkedIn.