Set Opportunity Stage before system validations fire

Question

I have automated my opportunity stage field using a before insert and before update trigger,

The result of this trigger is that if a user selects a stage for the opportunity object it will be overwritten by the trigger before the object is saved,

Because their choice will be overwritten anyway I would like users to not have to select a stage when creating a new opportunity,

Since opportunity stage is a required field and there is a system validation in place to prevent an opportunity being saved without a stage this cannot be solved with workflows or triggers,

I would greatly appreciate a solution to this problem.

Answer 1

You could create a custom button and pass &opp11=<default value> which will assign the default stage value in the stage picklist.

URL will be like this: /006/e?retURL=%2F006%2Fo&opp11=New