One of the changes which will take some getting used to in CRM 2013 is the removal of the “lead conversion” screen, present in versions prior to 2013. The convert screen has been deprecated, and in its place is an automatic conversion to account / contact, with a duplicate warning screen. This screen shows a lookup for account and contact, and requests you choose one if you believe there are matches. It doesn’t automatically do de-duplication for you unless you have a rule configured, but it’s the only barrier to duplicate creation between a lead and a contact/account/opp.
This doesn’t cause issues by default, because in effect, CRM 3,4 and 2011′s convert screen did the same thing, but there is a sense of the loss of some control over the process, even if you couldn’t customize in prior versions.
The Lead form also has the ability to link a lead to an existing contact and/or account in the process flow area, which can be marked as “required” if deemed applicable to a business process. I can’t imagine this ever being required, as leads by their very nature typically represent new business with new accounts / contacts in many scenarios.
One nice side-effect of this change, is that pop-up windows which are generated as a result of the conversion window disappear. This will be a major win for salespeople who always complain about CRM’s abundance of pop-up windows.
The disqualify option shows the disqualify statusreason codes inline on the form, without a pop-up.
