Hey everyone,

Let me briefly explain the trigger I wrote (my frist trigger actually). On the opportunity, we have a look-up field to other opportunities called 'Renewed Opportunity'. The idea is that when you create an opp that is a renewal, you use that field to reference the previous opportunity that is being renewed.

The trigger looks at the stage of the new renewal opp and updates a field on the referenced 'Renewed Opporunity' called 'Renewal Status'. The goal is to be able to see if an opp ended up renewing or not.

The issue here is that many of our older opportunities don't meet the validation rules we currently have in place. So if you populate that look-up field with an opp with missing data, you'll get an error message preventing you from updating the new, renewal opp you're creating.

Obviously, one solution would be to go back and update all our older opps, but that's practically impossible. So here is my question:

1) Is there something I can write in either the trigger or the validation rules to set up a bypass? For the validation rules, I tried writing in 'NOT(ISCHANGED(Renewal_Status__c))', but it seems that as long as a record is referenced, the validation rules will be required. The trigger doesn't even have to update the record.

2) If option 1 is not possible, is there a way to write an error message in the trigger that at least explains to the user in a clear manner that they have to update the referenced opp? I'd also like to list in the error the validation rules that must be met, but that would be a bonus.

In case you want to take a look at my trigger, here it is:


trigger RenewalProcess on Opportunity (after insert, after update) {
   
   Set<String> allOpps = new Set<String>();
    for(Opportunity renewalOpp : Trigger.new) {
        if (renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c != null) {
            allOpps.add(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c);
         }
    }

    List<Opportunity> potentialOpps = [SELECT Id FROM Opportunity WHERE Id IN :allOpps];

    Map<String,Opportunity> opportunityMap = new Map<String,Opportunity>();
        for (Opportunity o : potentialOpps) {
            opportunityMap.put(o.id,o);
        }
     
     List<Opportunity> oppsToUpdate = new List<Opportunity>();
       
        for (Opportunity renewalOpp : Trigger.new) {
            if (renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c != null && renewalOpp.StageName.equals('Closed Won')) {
                Opportunity renewedOpp = opportunityMap.get(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c);
                renewedOpp.Renewal_Status__c = 'Renewed';
                oppsToUpdate.add(renewedOpp);
            }
            else if(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c != null && !renewalOpp.IsClosed) {
                Opportunity renewedOpp = opportunityMap.get(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c);
                renewedOpp.Renewal_Status__c = 'In Negotiations';
                oppsToUpdate.add(renewedOpp);
            }
            else if(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c != null && (renewalOpp.StageName.equals('Closed Lost') || renewalOpp.StageName.equals('Closed Stalled'))) {
                Opportunity renewedOpp = opportunityMap.get(renewalOpp.Renewed_Opportunity__c);
                renewedOpp.Renewal_Status__c = 'Did Not Renew';
                oppsToUpdate.add(renewedOpp);
            }
           
           
        }
   
    update oppsToUpdate;
   
}


Let me know if you need anymore info from me!
-Greg