run territory assignment rules during account inserts

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Territory management in salesforce: 10 things you need to know.

By Andreea Doroftei

In this article, we’ll go through ten of the features and considerations you should be aware of before implementing Sales Territories in your Salesforce organization.

What Is Salesforce Sales Territories?

What is so special about sales territories, 1. data model.

2. Supported Objects

3. Territory Model Considerations

• Planning : This is the preview state of any territory model you create, during which you can make changes without much impact and review the setup prior to deploying it.
• Active : Only one territory model can be in the active state at a time, and this is the model on which record access and any territory forecasting will be based. Changes can still be made to this model as needed, users can be re-assigned, and new territories can be created, but these will have implications, such as sharing recalculation.
• Archived : Once a territory model is no longer in use and a new one is ready to go live, it can be easily archived from Setup. You will no longer be able to make changes to this model, including adjusting any of the account assignments or reactivating it, for example. Territories from the archived model will also be removed from the opportunity Territory2Id field automatically, but as long as you don’t delete the archived model, the past assignment will be visible in the Assigned Territories related list on Accounts. Territory forecasts and forecast types will also be deleted as a result of the archival.

4. Assignment Rules

5. Permissions

6. user assignment.

7. Sales Territories and Automation

8. Reports and Queries on Sales Territories Data

9. Field History Tracking

10. Territory Planning

Final Thoughts

Andreea doroftei.

Andreea is a Salesforce Technical Instructor at Salesforce Ben. She is an 18x certified Salesforce Professional with a passion for User Experience and Automation. 

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December 6, 2023

3 steps to bulk update Salesforce records and automate territory reassignment

Get the latest RevOps insights

Introduction.

Not only is planning and implementing territories a complex and time-consuming process, but leaders need to bulk update salesforce records and assign territories en mass once the planning process is complete.

This bulk record assignment also occurs as the year goes on and teams need to reassign every time a rep comes or goes, or there’s a riff.

Whether it’s because of an evolving go-to-market strategy or changes within the team, it’s crucial to make changes at the pace of the business. But if you’re stuck reassigning territories by working through spreadsheets and waiting for IT to do bulk updates, it’s not as easy as being able to “go in and update” your territories.

Modernizing your territory management process with a new bulk update or territory reassignment model eliminates complexity. It allows your go-to-market motions to stay nimble so your sales team can get straight to selling.

You might also like: 

• 8 signs you’re doing territory reassignment the old way
• What is a relationship map in Salesforce (and why you need one) 
• Always be optimizing: Salesforce territory management best practices

3 steps to bulk update Salesforce records for territory reassignment automation

Goodbye manual reassignment, hello mass automation! That’s the key difference between the old way of doing things and the new way for territory assignment in Salesforce. Quantified, it looks like going from hundreds of account conflicts to a 60% reduction, and weeks to months of manual work being done in hours.

Best of all, we’ve broken it down into 3 steps to get your started.

1. (Re)define your territories

Effective territory management starts with a clear definition of your territories. Are you combining, splitting, or creating a new territory?

Either way, you’ll need to analyze your current territories and identify data for regrouping, such as:

• Target Market
• Total Addressable Market (TAM)
• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
• Tier (Enterprise, Mid-Market, SMB)
• Hierarchy data

Here’s a tip: when considering hierarchy data: use a tool like Complete Hierarchies  so you’ll have a clear idea of how many subsidiaries belong to an enterprise company. You’ll also be able to roll up data across all child objects in an account and score them accordingly.

In addition to identifying different data points, you should also determine which metrics are important to your business for carving out equal territories. Common metrics to include in your planning and reporting include ARR, number of open opportunities, number of accounts, number of leads, and opportunity win rate.

By asking the right questions and qualifying key decisions, you can be proactive in saving time when account conflicts occur.

Pro Tip: Work closely with sales leadership to create rules of engagement Working with your sales team to understand how to best score and evaluate accounts will help lead to equal territories. For instance, you may want to break up bigger companies that span across geographies, industries, or multiple subsidiaries. Ensure you align with sales leaders for any context or exceptions (i.e. rep performance). It’s also important to roll out rules of engagement, such as holdover policies, to anticipate any edge cases before they occur.

2. Automate with territory objects

Once you’ve redefined your territories based on your go-to-market strategy, the automation step begins by creating a single source of truth and having a clear understanding of the connections and relationships between different objects and key data.

Custom territory objects allow you to easily reassign records or do bulk updates without the need to export or import large data loads.

A territory object or record is a list of accounts that you can automate. They help you capture and connect relevant account data and related accounts in one place. You can also make more informed decisions when balancing territories and automating ownership rules.

Here’s how it works. Stamp a territory identifier value on all the accounts you wish to split up. This can look like “US – Midwest – Major,” “US – Pacific – Minor,” “US – Atlantic – SME,” etc.

If you don’t have a territory ID, you could set up automation to crawl through and stamp a unique identifier based on existing ownership. But this still slows your processes down and forces you to rely on custom APEX flows, Salesforce Flow, or IT to do the heavy lifting.

Using a territory object record, you can use Complete Automation to automatically reassign territories and related objects in one place, saving time and sanity while removing the risk of spreadsheets and human error.

You can also set customizable rules to determine assignment actions on a larger scale or a record-by-record basis. For example, you could have ownership changes cascaded downward to include all child records or just a select number.

How it works:

1. Add user lookup(s) onto the territory object to associate ownership of a record to its aligned team member.

2. Include mappings to BDRs, SDRs, overlays, etc.

3. Assignment rules can be built that cascade ownership to territory records.

With a new territory view, you can reassign all territories and their related objects simply by changing the owner!

Pro Tip: Use a no-code assignment flow builder and territory alignment screen A flow builder allows you to bulk update record ownership and related sub-object records. When a change in territory ownership occurs, a flow can trigger that matches all accounts and child records linked to a territory. A territory alignment screen allows you to update territory alignments in real time instead of waiting for Salesforce admins to make the change.

3. Enable your go-to-market team

Reassigning territories means nothing without the team to execute.

Enabling your go-to-market team starts with providing visibility upfront. This builds trust and reduces misunderstandings or unwarranted account conflicts.

Here’s what that might look like:

Have reps complete a territory exercise at the beginning of the year and plan their account strategy. That way, if a sales rep takes over a territory or accounts during the middle of the year there’s a plan, and they can keep the momentum going – instead of starting from scratch.

• Make sure new sales reps can find out everything about a territory, such as associated accounts and who their champion is:
• Map out buying groups to keep track of each stakeholder’s role, advocacy and influence level to ensure you’re spending time talking to the people who can help you win
• Quickly bring leaders and other teams up to speed with the context they need to support a deal so every 1:1 coaching session, QBR, and ABM play is a success
• Struggling with siloed sales notes and empty fields? Keep data in Salesforce so you can accurately report on attribution, opportunity health, and more

Most importantly: Centralize the information and sales notes in Salesforce. Tools like Quip are a great start, but important details and deals can slip through the cracks as sales reps join or leave a team.

Pro Tip: Use a relationship map to improve sales processes and visibility Mid-market and enterprise companies have complex networks of employees, decision-makers, and relationships. In order to effectively close deals, your sales team needs to have an understanding of who’s an advocate of your brand and product, and who might be pushing for another solution. Relationship and influence maps like Complete Influence allow you to track how strong a relationship is and the decision influence that a person has in a deal. Sales reps can identify key players in a buying cycle and ensure that their efforts are going toward the right people.

Bulk updating Salesforce records takes time and slows you down. When reassigning territories quickly you want to empower your go-to-market team to stay nimble, close more deals, and effectively start selling faster.

To learn more about bulk updates or mass transfer options for territory assignment,  book a personalized demo with the Traction Complete team or download our free guide . We look forward to hearing from you!

Want to avoid Salesforce territory reassignment pains?

Download Traction Complete’s free guide and learn how to simplify and speed up your process.

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Product Support Portal

Search the knowledge base, welcome to the veeva product support portal, explanation of the territory utilities and salesforce assignment rule processes in veeva crm.

• October 27, 2023 14:14

The aim of this article is to explain the purpose of each Territory Utilities process along with the Salesforce Account Assignment Rules process briefly.

• Clearing the Veeva Cache is the first process. The Rebuild Veeva Territory Rules process requires clearing the Veeva Cache in order for the current or updated Territory Names to be queried and retrieved in the Veeva CRM instance.

In the Territory Utilities tab there are three types of jobs:

• Rebuild Veeva Territory Rules
• Test Territory Assignment
• Run Mass Assignment

SFDC (Salesforce) Account Assignment is considered the fifth process, which can be performed on the Territory Detail or on the Territory Model.

• Rebuild Veeva Territory Rules This process creates one SFDC local Assignment Rule and criterion for all Territories. This Rule, with its criterion, ensures that the SFDC Assignment process considers the Territory VoD values. The Territory Name (Not the DeveloperName) is added to the criterion. As there is an AND connection among all SFDC Assignment Rules under a single territory, any customer-defined rules (Local or Inherited) is taken into consideration in the SFDC Account Assignment process later. In the event, that the name of the Territory is updated - the Veeva Cache is cleared - the Rebuild Veeva Territory Rules process deletes the previous SFDC Assignment Rule, criterion, in turn, creates a new updated Rule, criterion with the new Territory Name.
• Test Territory Assignment This process populates the Territory test VoD field on Accounts based on their brick to terr and zip to terr associations. Territory Names (Not DeveloperNames) are populated. Account, Address inclusions, and exclusions are respected. The purpose of this field is to provide an estimation for the customer. Example: How many accounts are going to be assigned to which territories. It serves as a preview.
• Run Mass Assignment This process populates the Territory VoD field on Accounts based on their brick to terr and zip to terr associations. Territory Names (Not DeveloperNames) are populated. Account, Address inclusions, and exclusions are respected. The SFDC Assignment process using the Veeva Territory Rules uses this field.
• SFDC Account Assignment This process retrieves the Accounts, and respective Territory VoD values using the Veeva Territory Rules: customer-defined SFDC Assignment Rules (Local and Inherited).  It creates the AssociationCause = Territory2AssignmentRule ObjectTerritory2Association (OT2A) records.

It is highly recommended to review the following SFDC article which provides a detailed explanation of How Account Assignment Rules Work.

The two relevant SFDC objects related to SFDC Assignment Rules are as follows:

• ObjectTerritory2AssignmentRule - Stores the Rule record itself
• ObjectTerritory2AssignmentRuleItem - Stores the Criteria itself

The records of these objects may be managed using Data load. It is strongly recommended to take a regular backup of the records of these objects.

• Brick-to-terr and/or zip-to-terr records must have multiple Territory Names (Not DeveloperNames) populated in the following format: ;territoryname1;territoryname2;territoryname3;
• Brick-to-terr and/or zip-to-terr records must have the Territory Name (Not DeveloperName) populated in the following format: ;territoryname1;
• Clearing the Veeva Cache is necessary before rebuilding the Veeva Territory Rules process. The assignment processes, Mass / Test Assigning, and SFDC Assignment may be initiated on the entire hierarchy, on specific territory branches, or specific territories.
• The status of SFDC Assignment Rule jobs can be checked by navigating to Jobs -> Background Jobs .
• It is strongly discouraged to remove Territory2AssignmentRule ObjectTerritory2Association (OT2A) records with manual or data loading methods. The necessary data/custom rule changes need to be made and these OT2A needs to be removed by the SFDC Assignment Process.
• The Mass Assignment processes do not start the SFDC Assignment Process automatically.

Related Documentation:

CRM Help Documentation: 

• Territory Management Overview

Salesforce Documentation:

• How Account Assignment Rules Work
• Run territory assignment rules when you edit an Account

Knowledge Article:

• Is It Possible to Create and Maintain Salesforce Assignment Rules Beginning with the Name of VT in Veeva CRM Manually?
• What are the Maintenance Steps of the Mass Assignment Process of the Territory Utilities Tool of Veeva CRM?
• Is it Possible to Stop any Type of Mass Assignment or SFDC Assignment Rule Jobs in Veeva CRM?
• During Mass/Test Assignment, How are Accounts Selected Based on the Include In Territory Assignment and Primary Fields of the Address Object in Veeva CRM?
• The Territory Mass Assignment is Unexpectedly Launched for Every Territory in Veeva CRM
• Is it Expected that the Mass/Test Assignment Process Updates Account Records Multiple Times in Veeva CRM?

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Territory Management Help

I need help please with ETM.

We are in the process of setting this up. In our org we have manually assigned accounts for all of our sales reps, which stay for at least the year. These are generally set by region, but strategic decisions dictate that there are outliers.

in ETM there is the “Evaluate this account against territory rules on save” field which is a checkbox which appears in the main edit window of an Account record when it is being edited.

We have two problems

If an account is manually assigned and the “Evaluate this account against territory rules on save” field is checked, then it also assigns the account to the territory again, so it makes a duplicate (manual and auto). We only want an account to be assigned once.

For all manually assigned accounts, we do not want to evaluate back to the account on save. We only want this “Evaluate this account against territory rules on save” field to be checked for new accounts.

How can we handle this?

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Why Account Assignment Rules removes Account from Territory?

I have a Territory Account assignment rule with a simple condition. If the Account Country = United States and State = XYZ, assign to a territory. The assignment rule works fine and there are accounts assigned to this territory. However, recently when I reran the rules, it removed few accounts from the territory which had a matching condition. Morever, if I manually edit the Account and save it, the account is assigned to the Territory. Running the rules again removes the account from territory.

I checked salesforce help but couldn't find any reason why an account with matching condition would be removed from a territory. Can someone help me out here?

Example of rule:

(Account: Account Record TypeEQUALSCommercial) AND (Account: Billing CountryEQUALSUnited States) AND (Account: Billing State/Province CodeEQUALSWA,OR,NV,ID,MT,AK,HI,UT,CO,KS,NE,WY,ND,SD,MN,IA,WI,MI,IN,IL)

Example of Address of Commercial record:

Chicago, Illinois 60606 United States

Here Illinois is IL and hence satisfies the territory rule. There are other accounts as well in Illinois who have the territory assigned perfectly but for very few the run rules remove them from the territory. Same is the case for few other states as well.

Update: I created another question which may hold the answer to this. Link: Query Account field IsExcludedFromRealign

• assignment-rules
• territory-management

• It would help if you posted and example of one of your rules that is failing so people have a better idea of what you're dealing with. –  crmprogdev Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 14:50
• @crmprogdev Added example in the question. –  RajeshShah Commented Aug 10, 2014 at 18:11

5 Answers 5

IsExcludedFromRealign would also prevent the reassignment when manually updated no?

When you go into a territory and select Manage Rules , down at the bottom there is a Preview button. Does the account show there? Could it be that there is another assignment rule running when you manually update and thus not working when you run the rule you're looking at? Are you actually pressing the Run Rules button?

Not trying to be condescending but running through all the possible scenarios.

I don't know if you've done this in all your other rules or not, but I see spacing issues with what you've posted that would cause problems running them.

has a problem with no space between TypeEQUALS and Commercial, CountryEQUALS United, and CodeEQUALS WA, so should look like:

Note that I checked the source code you'd pasted into your original message above before posting this answer. I strongly suspect your errors are caused by the missing spaces since the rules as typed would make no sense to SF.

• Space is not issue. Its just that the formatting got messed up when I pasted the rules from Salesforce to here. –  RajeshShah Commented Aug 11, 2014 at 6:36

I assume since you're referencing the state/province code field, that you're using State and Country Picklists.

Once you enable S&CP, the code fields should be the source of truth. If the problem isn't the spacing issue that crmprogdev pointed out, try using Billing Country Code instead of Billing Country. It's possible that you might have accounts with text and code field out of sync.

(You can check for this by running a report on Accounts where

• Billing Country = "US"
• Billing Country (text only) != "United States" (or whatever your integration value for US is)

If you find accounts like that, out of sync, re-saving them will fix it.)

• The Billing Country has the value US. Also as I mentioned, if I save the account manually, the Territory is assigned successfully. However, running the rules again removes the Account from the territory. –  RajeshShah Commented Aug 11, 2014 at 6:48

Was finally able to fix this though still not sure what was the issue. I noticed that the preview was not showing the accounts I wanted even though the columns themselves showed that they were satisfying the conditions. Because of this I created another rule to the same territory. In this rule, instead of specifying the 2 digit state code, I specified the complete State string. And it was working. So in the end, I combined the two rules.

(Account: Account Record Type EQUALS Commercial) AND (Account: Billing Country EQUALS United States) AND ((Account: Billing State/Province Code EQUALS WA,OR,NV,ID,MT,AK,HI,UT,CO,KS,NE,WY,ND,SD,MN,IA,WI,MI,IN,IL) OR (Account: Billing State/Province EQUALS Washington,Oregon,Nevada,Idaho,Montana,Alaska,Hawaii,Utah,Colorado,Kansas,Nebraska,Wyoming,North Dakota,South Dakota,Minnesota,Iowa,Wisconsin,Michigan,Indiana,Illinois))

Now when I run the rules, the assignments are proper. I still don't understand 1 issue though. Why did manually saving the account assigned the territory while running rules removed it?

But atleast it is working for now. Thanks for all your help.

You don't need to use both State/Province Code and State/Province, the best solution is to use 'contains' instead of 'equal' to with State/Province Code:

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