Contact workflow not firing upon conversion

Question

I've set up a workflow rule on the Contact object to change a picklist value if it's blank and the Contact owner is a certain role. However, when a lead is converted, the workflow rule doesn't fire.

I've tried toggling on and off the "Require Validation for Converted Leads" lead setting, but it doesn't seem to help.

Here's the formula for the workflow:

AND(
   Owner.UserRole.Name = "SDR",
   ISBLANK( 
      TEXT(SDR_Active_Status__c) 
   )
)

And the action taken is a Field Update to make SDR_Active_Status__c = "Open" -- this update action re-evaluates workflows after completion.

The SDR_Active_Status__c field is mapped to the same picklist at the lead level and seems to be the point of error. Even when the field isn't filled out at the lead level, the formula seems to fail at that part after conversion.

Any ideas why this would not work?

EDIT

Upon further investigation, I found that the workflows are firing, but the Owner criteria is causing it not to trigger properly.

For example, I modified my original trigger above to be this:

ISBLANK(TEXT(SDR_Active_Status__c))

And it works properly upon lead conversion. However, when that workflow fires, it updates a field and re-evaluates workflows, which should then trigger this workflow:

AND(
       ISPICKVAL(SDR_Active_Status__c, "Open"),
       OR(
          SDR_Status_Open_Date_Day__c = "Friday",
          SDR_Status_Open_Date_Day__c = "Saturday"
       ),
       OR(
          Owner.Alias = "rrein",
          Owner.Alias = "ahans",
          Owner.Alias = "sconn"
       )
    )

But that doesn't work. I tried modifying it to use the Owner.UserRole.Name = "SDR" criteria, and also tried creating a formula field that copies the role to the Contact object, but nothing worked.

If I remove any reference to the Contact owner, the workflow DOES work. Any ideas why the references to the Owner of the record would cause the workflow to not run?

Answer 1

@Matt - I think one thing you can try is to add a email alert to the same workflow and include the Owner Name in the email just for the debugging purpose. That would tell you who was the owner of the record when the Workflow rule fired. Though this is not the solution to your problem, might help in debugging further.

Answer 2

I wound up using @sfdcfox's suggestion of a @future method. My new process is: a simple trigger fires on Lead after update in which it checks for the lead conversion -- then it calls a @future class which updates a checkbox on the new contact.

By doing it this way, the checkbox is updated after the conversion is completed, so the change of ownership is also finalized. Now my workflow looks to make sure the checkbox is TRUE and my owner criteria is met before it goes to work.