How can I update a lead that is being converted?

Question

We have a report that aggregates all of our leads based upon status. The person who actually cares about this data would like to distinguish between a converted (status: qualified) lead and a converted lead that had an opportunity associated with it (custom status: qualified with opportunity).

I wrote a simple afterUpdate trigger which accomplishes this, however it doesn't work because you can't update a lead once it has been converted:

//Update the lead status if there is a related opportunity and the status hasn't previously been set
if (updatedLead.ConvertedOpportunityId != null && updatedLead.Status != STATUS_QUALIFIED_OPP) {
    updatedLead.Status = STATUS_QUALIFIED_OPP;
    update updatedLead;
}

I seemingly can't use a beforeUpdate trigger because the ConvertedOpportunityId hasn't been set so I don't know if there's a related opportunity.

Does anyone have an idea how I can accomplish changing the status once I know the lead has a related opportunity?

Edit

Here is the trigger:

trigger LeadTrigger on Lead (after delete, after insert, after undelete, after update, before delete, before insert, before update) {
    LeadTriggerHandler handler = new LeadTriggerHandler(Trigger.size);

    if(Trigger.isUpdate && Trigger.isAfter){
        handler.OnAfterUpdate(Trigger.new);
    }
}

And the OnAfterUpdate method:

public void OnAfterUpdate(Lead[] updatedLeads) {
    this.VerifyLeadStatus(updatedLeads);
}

public void VerifyLeadStatus(Lead[] updatedLeads) {
    for (Lead updatedLead : updatedLeads) {
        System.debug(updatedLead.Status + ' ' + updatedLead.ConvertedOpportunityId);            

        if(updatedLead.Status == 'Qualified' && updatedLead.ConvertedOpportunityId != null) {
            updatedLead.Status.addError('You cannot use Qualified as a status value when creating an opportunity');
        }

        if(updatedLead.Status == 'Qualified with Opportunity' && updatedLead.ConvertedOpportunityId == null) {
            updatedLead.Status.addError('You cannot use Qualified with Opportunity as a status value when not creating an opportunity');
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

The answer to this question is practically in the question: you can't detect conversion in a "before update lead" database event, so you have no opportunity (pun intended) to alter the status of the converted lead during the conversion process. Instead, you will need to simply validate if the status is correct for the type of conversion that occurs:

trigger LeadTrigger on Lead (after update) {
    for(Lead record: Trigger.new) {
        if(record.Status == 'Qualified' && record.ConvertedOpportunityId != null) {
            record.status.addError('You cannot use Qualified as a status value when creating an opportunity');
        }
        if(record.Status == 'Qualified with Opportunity' && record.ConvertedOpportunityId == null) {
            record.status.addError('You cannot use Qualified with Opportunity as a status value when not creating an opportunity');
        }
    }
}

Also note that it appears that IsConverted is also set to false until the after update event fires during lead conversion.

Important Note

If your instance was created prior to 2008 you might not have the "Enable Validation and Triggers from Lead Convert" setting enabled. If this setting is not enabled your lead triggers will not fire during lead conversion. To enable the feature open a case with Salesforce and ask them to enable it.

Answer 2

To achieve your requirement couldn't you use a formula field instead of code?

For example (I haven't tested this), if (!ISNULL(ConvertedOpportunityId) && TEXT(Status) != STATUS_QUALIFIED_OPP, 'STATUS_QUALIFIED_OPP', TEXT(Status) )

Then you could use this field for your reports....