Trigger to copy notes body (text) to Lead field

Question

My org has a 3rd party app where Users can submit Leads through an app on their iPad, one issue though is that the app inserts one field as a Note attached to the Lead, rather than as text filled into a field. Currently, someone has to go into each note and copy the body of the Note into the Lead field for it to be useful. I'm looking to automate this by writing a Trigger to copy this info when the Note is inserted to the 'Notes' field on the Lead, but I've had a hard time finding documentation on Notes on the SFDC website.

Answer 1

This is a (fairly) trivial trigger to write. Here's a basic (non-error-proofed) version you could start with:

trigger NoteCopy on Note (after insert, after update) {
    // Notes attached to leads
    Note[] leadNotes = new Note[0];
    // Just notes for leads...
    for(Note record: Trigger.new) {
        if(record.ParentId != null && record.ParentId.getSObjectType() == Lead.SObjectType) {
            leadNotes.add(record);
        }
    }
    // No notes to process? We're done.
    if(leadNotes.isEmpty()) {
        return;
    }
    // Update Lead records with new notes.
    Map<Id, Lead> records = new Map<Id, Lead>();
    for(Note record: leadNotes) {
        records.put(record.ParentId, new Lead(Id=record.ParentId, Note__c=record.Body));
    }
    update records.values();
}

This basic version doesn't worry about record locks, overwriting existing note values, and other validation errors. However, in the general case, this should work for a relatively standard org.