Filter in ListView Account Name

I see a few problems with the approach of having a relationship between Leads and Accounts, not the least of which would be the effect it would have on the Lead Conversion process.

The intent of having the Account field as freeform is that you can populate that field from web forms and other lead sources without worrying too much about adding "junk" to your Accounts module.

I see Leads as a bit of a dumping ground, while Contacts/Accounts are a much more solid, curated, list of people/entities we have done business with or are actively trying to do business with (we determined that an Opportunity exist).

By not relating the Lead to an Account you can have more control over what Accounts are created, and more control over the standardization of names.

If the problem is that you have a team who qualifies Leads and tries to map Account Names for a cleaner Lead Conversion, I can see why you would want the auto-populate that the Relate Field affords.

If I had to work on something like this I would try to see if I could devise a query-based validation of the Account Name.

Perhaps add a new non-db query based Dropdown Field that could look up the existing Account Names and suggest possible matches, then copy the selection from that Dropdown to the text-based Account Name while still allowing the user to override the value in the text field and therefore add a new Account Name if needed... could be a bit of a convoluted solution but perhaps less so than making Account a relate field?

This is just a quick brainstorm on my part, so don't take it too seriously, it would need to be thought through a bit more...

FrancescaS

Thank you,

Thank you,