Configure Opportunity Line Items via Custom VF before the Opportunity is created

Question

I am building a CPQ type tool. So the User can configure the Products they need via some Custom VF page. Then when they have done this I want to direct them to the standard Opportunity Edit page which they are familiar with. I dont want to re-create this in VF. The standard edit page will allow them to Save. Obviously if I direct them to the standard Edit page I will lose the Product configuration as this is stored in a Custom Controller [RAM] and not yet written to the DB.

Thanks

Answer 1

The best way to address this is to go ahead and create the opportunity for the user when they finish building out the products in your CPQ tool and then redirect them to the edit page for that opportunity. The one downside to this approach is that if a user cancels at that point the expected behavior would be for no records to be saved.

I've not done your specific scenario, but I have done this in the past to do complex value defaulting above and beyond what you can accomplish by passing variables into the standard new record page. Users haven't reported any issues with this approach.