A question that is common asked is “How can I map a field from the Lead entity to a field on the Account Entity and Contact Entity when a Lead is Qualified?”.

When you qualify a Lead you can create a number of records namely: Account, Contact and/or Opportunity. You get the chance to determine which of these records are created depending on your requirements.

For example in some cases you might only want to create an opportunity as you know the Account and Contact already exist. On the other hand qualifying a lead does not necessarily mean you want to create an opportunity.

After you choose to Qualify a Lead Microsoft Dynamics will populate mapped data fields from the Lead to the newly created Account, Contact and/or Opportunity records. By default quite a number of fields are mapped for you already (such as most of the address fields, telephone numbers, first name, last name, etc). However if you would like other fields to be passed through as well for example custom fields (e.g. newsletter subscription) then you will need to map them manually. The value of the newsletter subscription field will then be automatically passed on from the Lead record to the Contact record when you qualify a Lead.

Don’t worry it is quite an easy process.

Below I have described the steps on how to map fields from a Lead to a Contact record. You can do the same for the Account and Opportunity records.

You will also need to map the lead fields to corresponding contact fields so that the data will transfer over when you convert a lead into a contact.

1. Click Settings in the bottom left in the Sitemap
2. Click Customization in the top left navigation.
3. Click Customizations.
4. Click Customize The System.
5. Double click on Entities to expand this section.
6. Double click on Lead to expand this section.
7. Click 1:N Relationships in the left navigation.
8. Double click on the Schema Name contact_originating_lead with the Primary Entity value Lead and the Related Entity value Contact.
9. Click Mappings in the left navigation.
10. Click New.
11. Select field name from the Source Entity Fields list on the left and the Contact field name in the Target Entity Fields list on the right that you want to map to.
12. Click OK.
13. Repeat this steps 10-12 if you want to map more fields.

If you are still unsure as to how to approach this please feel free to contact us on +61 3 9010 6101, email us at info@organonconsulting.com.au.