About Assignment Rules
Before you begin. To set up the assignment rules, your role must include the Data Rules and Assignment privilege.
Assignment rules allow you to automatically assign a lead, an opportunity, a service request, or an account to the appropriate person, team, and territory, based on the rules (called rule groups) that you set up.
If your company has selected the group assignment option, all group members share the records you assign to a member of that group. For more information, see About Groups.
Depending on your company's structure and business processes, assignment rules can be simple. For example:
- Sales leads for each geographic region are assigned to the regional sales manager.
- New service requests are assigned to the technical service manager.
Or, the rules can be more complex. For example:
- Most leads are assigned by product expertise and geographic location, but some are assigned to a telemarketing manager.
- Most service requests are assigned by problem area, but all requests involving a particular product are routed to one person.
The following table describes how you can assign record types:
This record type
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Has these assignment options
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Accounts
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You can assign the records to an employee or territory. Additionally, you can specify teams that share ownership of the newly assigned accounts.
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Leads
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You can assign the records to an employee.
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Opportunities
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You can assign the records to an employee or a territory. Additionally, you can specify teams that share ownership of the newly assigned opportunities.
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Service Requests
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You can assign the records to an employee.
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The assignment rules in the active rule group are evaluated when the following occurs in relation to a record type:
- For leads: The Reassign Lead Owner check box is selected.
- For service requests:
- The service request is created without an owner or the owner is deleted from the record (that is, the Owner field is blank).
- The Reassign Owner check box is selected.
- For accounts: The Reassign Owner check box is selected.
- For opportunities: The Reassign Owner check box is selected.
NOTE: When a lead or service request is assigned an owner, an email is sent to the new owner. You can turn off email notification for Service Requests on a per-rule basis by deselecting the Send Email Notification check box (flag) on the Service Request Assignment Rule Edit page. To do this, click the Admin global link, click Data Rules and Assignment, and then click Service Request Assignment Rules. Click the link for the rule group and then click the Edit link for the rule.
Tracking the Reassignment Process
You can use three fields to help you to track the owner reassignment process, or to run analyses to determine how long the reassignment process takes. You can add these fields to Account, Opportunity, Lead, and Service Request page layouts. The fields are:
- Assignment Status
The status can be Queued (the record is in the queue to be processed by assignment manager), or Processing (the record is currently being processed by assignment manager), or blank (the record is neither in the queue or being processed).
- Last Assignment Submission Date
If the record is queued for processing or is currently being processed by assignment manager, this field shows the date and time the record was saved with the Reassign Owner check box selected. However, in the case of a service request record, this field shows the date and time the record was saved with the Owner field blank.
- Last Assignment Completion Date
If a record has never been reassigned, this field is blank; otherwise, the field shows the date and time the record was last reassigned.
For more information on adding fields to page layouts, see Customizing Static Page Layouts.
Making Rule Groups Active
You can create multiple assignment rule groups, but only one rule group can be active at a time for each record type.
CAUTION: The rule group that was marked active the last time that the rules were released continues to be active until the rules are released again. When the rules are next released, the rule group that was most recently marked active becomes active. When you create a new rule group, and mark it active, do not delete the previously active rule group until after the rules have been released.
TIP: Rule groups can serve as historical reference for the leads. Instead of deleting rule groups, you can mark them as inactive.
About Group Assignment
If your company assigns records to entire groups instead of one employee, your company administrator must:
- Select the Default Group Assignment field in the Company Profile page (see Setting Up Your Company Profile and Global Defaults).
- Set up the groups before activating the assignment rules (see Setting Up Groups).
- Select one member in the group to be the owner for accounts or opportunities during the assignment procedure.
When the record is assigned to an owner in the group:
- The Owner field shows the owner's information.
- The Primary Group field shows the group name that the owner belongs to on the record Edit and Detail pages, if the company administrator added the field to the layout.
- The record appears in the areas of the applications that normally display that employee's records, such as Homepages and record lists.
Generally, all members in the group have full access to the record, although access levels can be adjusted to restrict a user's access.
Scenario for Assigning Leads
The following is an example of a typical company's business rules for assigning leads. To set up the rules that automatically assign this company's leads, the administrator does the following:
- States the company's business rules for assigning leads to people.
For example, for accounts in the U.S., many sales territories are assigned by state, but in certain states, the product expertise determines the territory assignments. In addition, Corporation XYZ account is always assigned to one particular sales manager regardless of the lead's state or product interest.
- Lists all of the assignment scenarios that are necessary to cover the business rules:
- Account (company) is Corporation XYZ. Assign to Sales Manager A.
- Primary Address - State is CA, NV, OR, WA. Assign to Sales Manager B.
- Primary Address - State is OH, IN, MI, NY, KY. Assign to Sales Manager C.
- Lead is interested in the ABC Product (in all states except those listed already, and not for Corporation XYZ). Assign to Sales Manager D.
- Primary Address - State is not listed. Assign to Sales Manager E.
- Puts the scenarios in the order in which they are to be considered.
First, examine the Account field. If the value is Corporation XYZ, assign the lead to Sales Manager A, regardless of any other conditions. If this criterion is not matched, examine the Primary Address State field. If the value is CA, NV, OR, or WA, assign the lead to Sales Manager B, and so on.
As a best practice, use the Record Assignment Template to help you plan your company's assignment scenarios, and to set up rules that give you the results you want.
Criteria Conditions in Assignment Rules
You can use the following conditions in the criteria on assignment rules:
- Between. Matches the rule to records where the value in the criterion field is between two values defined on the rule criterion. (The results do not include records where the value in the criterion field is equal to one of the values on the rule.) Use a comma to separate the values. Do not use a dash (-) to specify a value range or to separate values.
Use the Between condition for date fields only. Use the MM/DD/YYYY date format.
- Contains all values. Matches the rule to records where the criterion field contains the criterion value on the rule. For example, the criterion value, qual, matches the rule to records where the criterion field contains a value, such as qualifying or qualified.
You cannot use the Contains all values condition for date fields or number fields.
- Contains exact field value. Matches the rule to records where the criterion field contains all of the string in the criterion field value, and no additional characters. For example, the criterion value Closed matches the rule to records where the criterion field value is Closed, but not Closed/won.
You cannot use the Contains exact field value condition for date fields or number fields.
- Contains none of the values. Matches the rule to records where the criterion field contains any values that are not equal to the rule criterion value.
You cannot use the Contains none of the values condition for date fields or number fields.
- Less than or equal to. Matches the rule to records where the value in the criterion field is less than or equal to the rule criterion value.
You can use the Less than or equal to condition for number fields and currency fields only.
- Greater than or equal to. Matches the rule to records where the value in the criterion field is greater than or equal to the rule criterion value.
You can use the Greater than or equal to condition for number fields and currency fields only.
For step-by-step instructions on how to set up assignment rules, see Setting Up Assignment Rules.
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