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understand-lead-distributions-assignment-rules.md

Latest commit, file metadata and controls, understand record distribution in assignment rules.

In Dynamics 365 Sales, assignment rules automatically distribute, or assign, new and updated leads, opportunities, and insights to your sales team. The automated process saves you time and effort and optimizes the workload across your sales team.

Assignment rules can distribute these records in either of two ways: round robin or load balancing.

• In round robin distribution , the primary consideration is when sellers were last assigned a record.
• In load balancing distribution , the primary consideration is their capacity, or how many active records they're working on.

Depending on its definition, a rule that prioritizes load balancing might still use round robin criteria to assign records to sellers.

It's important to understand both the differences between them and how other criteria—like your sellers' workload and schedules—affect how records are assigned.

[!INCLUDE sales-work-assignment ]

Round robin distribution

Round robin assignment distributes a new or updated record fairly among the sellers who meet the rule's criteria. It gives the record to the seller who's waited the longest for a new lead, opportunity, or insight, including records that were assigned manually or by an add-in. The order of round robin distribution is stored at the organization level, not at the rule level.

Let's look at some scenarios to understand round robin distribution.

A lead comes into the system at 11:20 PM. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, three sellers can potentially work on the lead:

Miriam's last assignment is earlier than Sanjay's and Susana's. Miriam has been waiting longest, so the lead is assigned to her.

An opportunity comes into the system at 1:50 PM, and a sales manager manually assigns it to Susana. When a record is assigned manually, the order of assignment changes from the last assignment for the rule that's associated with that record type. However, the order of assignment doesn't change for assignment rules that are associated with other entity types.

Another lead comes into the system at 2:30 PM. The assignment rule assigns it to Sanjay. The order now looks like this:

A new lead comes into the system at 3:00 PM. A sales manager manually assigns it to Miriam. The new order of assignment looks like this:

A set of rules is created for assigning records to three sellers, Miriam, Sanjay, and Susana, in that order.

• Rule 1 assigns an incoming lead to Miriam. The new order becomes Sanjay, Susana, Miriam.
• Rule 2 assigns the next incoming lead to Sanjay. The order is now Susana, Miriam, Sanjay.
• Rule 3 assigns the next lead to Susana. The order is now Miriam, Sanjay, Susana.
• Rule 1 assigns the next lead to Miriam.

Only Rule 1 assigns the record to Miriam twice consecutively. This is because the order of assigning records is stored at the organization level, not at the rule level.

A rule is created for assigning records to two sellers, Miriam and Sanjay, in that order.

Miriam generates a lead and automatically becomes its owner. When the rule is executed, the lead is assigned to Sanjay, not Miriam, and the assignment order is now Miriam and Sanjay.

Why? When a seller creates a record, they become its owner and are automatically included in the distribution list. This affects the order in which future records are assigned.

Load balancing distribution

Load balancing assignment also distributes a new or updated record fairly among the sellers who meet the rule's criteria. It gives the record to the seller who can take on more work. This method makes sure that all salespeople have a fair share of work and reduces uneven workloads.

Let's look at an example to understand load balancing distribution.

A lead comes into the system. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, three sellers can potentially work on the lead:

Susana can handle more work right now than Miriam or Sanjay. Susana gets the lead, and her available capacity is now 14.

Let's assume that Miriam, Sanjay, and Susana can all potentially work on the next few incoming leads.

Two new leads come into the system. Susana still has the most available capacity, so the leads are assigned to her. Afterward, their available capacity looks like this:

One more lead comes into the system. Sanjay and Susana are equally available. Susana got a lead more recently, so the new one is assigned to Sanjay based on round robin criteria. Now their available capacity looks like this:

Miriam closes three leads, increasing her available capacity to 13. A new lead comes into the system. Miriam now has the most capacity, so it's assigned to her.

Other distribution criteria

Assignment rules prioritize fairness in different ways depending on whether you select round robin or load balancing distribution. But fairness isn't the only consideration when records need to be assigned. They can also consider whether sellers are available to take on more work—that is, sellers' workload and work schedule.

Consider seller workload

In your assignment rule definitions, you can select Assign record type based on seller capacity . This option distributes records only to sellers who have the capacity to work on them. If no one does, the records are left unassigned.

Let's look again at our sales team, a little later on the same day.

A new lead comes into the system. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, four sellers can potentially work on it:

With round robin distribution alone, Miriam, who's been waiting longer for an assignment than the others, would get the lead. However, you told the rule to Assign leads based on seller capacity , and Miriam's available capacity right now is –2. Sanjay has been waiting next longest, but Sanjay's available capacity is 0. The lead goes to Susana.

If no seller who met the criteria had available capacity greater than zero, the lead would be left unassigned.

Consider seller work schedule

In your assignment rule definitions, you can select Assign if a seller is available within N hours , where N is a whole number from 1 to 120. This option distributes records only to sellers whose work schedule shows they're available within the time you select. If no one is, the records are left unassigned. Learn how to set sellers' availability .

The rule considers matched sellers first by assignment priority (load balancing or round robin) and then by who is available, from now up to the maximum time allowed.

As shown in the following diagram, matched sellers are divided into six buckets of 24 hours each based on their work schedules. If no sellers fall in the first bucket, round robin distribution supersedes load balancing even if load balancing distribution is prioritized. The rule continues to evaluate the buckets from top to bottom. When it encounters a nonempty bucket, the rule assigns the lead to the sellers in the bucket based on round robin criteria.

:::image type="content" source="./media/sa-ar-lead-distribution-buckets.png" alt-text="Diagram illustrating how seller availability is evaluated in 24-hour buckets.":::

Let's look at an example to understand how sellers' work schedules affect the assignment of records.

In your assignment rules, you prioritize round robin distribution and set a time limit of 48 hours.

A new lead comes into the system on a Friday evening from an inquiry form on your website. Several sellers meet the criteria of an assignment rule, but none of them are working now. Next, the rule considers matching sellers who are available within the next 24 hours. That day is Saturday. Ordinarily, Sanjay would be working, but Sanjay's calendar says he's on vacation. No other sellers are available, so the rule looks at the next 24 hours. No one is working on Sunday either. The rule has reached the limit of 48 hours, so the lead is left unassigned. If the time limit had been 60 hours, the lead would have been assigned to the first seller who was available on Monday morning.

Let's look at a few more examples in detail to understand how seller availability and workload affect round robin and load balancing distribution. Let's use the following notation for a seller's availability at the time of routing:

• 0D - Currently available
• 1D - Earliest available within 24 hours
• 2D - Earliest available from 24 to 48 hours
• 3D - Earliest available from 48 to 72 hours
• 4D - Earliest available from 72 to 96 hours
• 5D - Earliest available from 96 to 120 hours

Example 1: Round robin, consider seller availability only

The rule matched the following sellers:

Two sellers, Vivek and Sal, are available first. Vivek got a lead more recently than Sal, so the rule distributes the lead to Sal.

The next leads to come in are assigned to Vivek, then to Sal, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes. The sellers' capacity isn't a consideration.

Example 2: Load balancing, consider seller availability only

Again, the rule matched the following sellers:

Again, Vivek and Sal are available first. This time, Vivek has the higher capacity, so the rule distributes the lead to him.

The next leads to come in are assigned to Vivek until Vivek's capacity falls below Sal's. Following leads go to Sal until Sal's capacity falls below Vivek's, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes. In this scenario, the sellers' capacity isn't a consideration. Vivek's and Sal's capacity can fall below zero as long as they're available before the others.

Example 3: Load balancing, consider seller availability and capacity

Once again, the rule matched the following sellers:

Because Assign leads based on seller capacity has been selected in the assignment rule definition, the rule ignores Vivek and Sal even though they're available first. That leaves Burt, Maya, and Maria:

Burt and Maya are available before Maria, so Maria is dropped from consideration:

The rule is configured to prioritize load balancing. However, load balancing distribution only works with sellers who are available at the time of routing. Because Burt and Maya aren't available now, the rule uses round robin criteria instead.

With capacity no longer a consideration, the rule considers who's been waiting for a lead longer:

The rule assigns the lead to Maya. The next leads to come in are assigned to Burt, then to Maya, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes.

Related information

• Create and activate an assignment rule
• Set capacity for sellers

• Dynamics 365 Sales
• IT Professionals

Automatically route deals to the right sellers by using segments in assignment rules

• By Bar Segal, UX Designer

Dynamics 365 Sales helps teams better understand business relationships, take actions based on insights, and close opportunities faster. One of the many ways the app helps sales teams succeed is enabling them to build segments for use in assignment rules to ensure leads and opportunities are routed to the right sellers.

What is a segment?

A segment is a collection of leads and opportunities that are grouped together based on certain conditions, such as location, deal value, language, and product. You can create segments for both lead and opportunity entities. For details, see this article: Create and activate a segment .

You can use segments in assignment rules and sequences . With segments, you can choose the set of characteristics a lead or opportunity should have in order to get assigned to relevant sellers or to connect to a certain sequence, without the need to create the same conditions repeatedly.

When a new lead or opportunity is created in Dynamics 365 Sales and matches the conditions of a specified segment, it will automatically become a member of that segment, and will assign to sellers and connect to a sequence based on how you build your organization’s process automation.

Let’s take an example to understand how it works.

Define segment conditions

The following segment is defined with simple conditions, to catch all leads coming from the company’s website and that have an email address.

A segment can also include more complex parameters, using groups of AND/OR conditions or a link to a related entity. For example, you can create a segment that will capture all opportunities that are interested in printers or monitors, and that are related to one of two relevant accounts.

Simulate segment members

You can simulate the results based on existing data in your system, to make sure the segment will catch the lead or opportunity with the desired characteristics. The simulation results are not actual members of that segment and are just an example of the types of leads the segment will capture when it is activated.

Important highlights and limitations

• A lead or opportunity will be evaluated for a segment when it is created, and again when it is being updated. For example, a lead can enter the system without a populated email address, but after going through a nurturing process, an email address will be added, and the lead will become a member of the “Nurtured leads from website” segment in the above example.
• Your segment must be activated to catch new leads or opportunities.
• A lead or opportunity can become a member of only one segment. If a lead matches the conditions of more than one segment, it will randomly become a member of one of them.
• When a lead is added to a segment and assigned to a seller or connected to a sequence, it can’t be added to a different segment, seller, or sequence.

How to use a segment in assignment rules

When creating assignment rules for a lead or opportunity, you can use a segment to define the type of record that will be assigned to sellers via each rule. You can create multiple rules based on the same segment and add specific conditions to each rule to match your business process.

In the following example, we can select the “Nurtured leads from website” segment. This means that all leads that will become members of that segment will be assigned to sellers by this rule’s conditions.

We can add another condition to that segment that will route the hot leads from the segment to the most experienced sellers.

For this scenario, we can create two rules: one rule to capture hot leads from the segment, and another rule to catch all remaining leads from the segment.

By placing the rule for assigning hot leads above the default rule, hot leads will be evaluated first and will be assigned to experienced sellers. The rest of the leads will be assigned by the default rule.

For more information about segments, read the documentation:

• How to manage segments
• How to connect a segment to sequence

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Assignment Rule for Lead and Opportunity Routing

Problem Definition:

Unassigned Lead or Opportunity would result in loss of business. Also, inability of a seller to reach out to the customer due to overburden of lead assigned could result in loss.

Solution: Assignment Rule for Lead Routing

This rule helps to assign new leads and opportunities to sellers and sales team automatically, thereby skipping the human intervention and reducing the effort and time for the assignments of records. Also, it helps in overcoming issues such as loss of lead due to not being assigned to user or team and also helps to reduce the overburden on a particular user or team.

Requirements:

License:                                Dynamics 365 Sales Premium or Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise

Security Role:                    System Administrator, Sequence Manager, Sales Manager.

Prerequisite:

You need to have enabled Sales Accelerator feature in your organization.

Create and activate an assignment rule.

Navigate to Sales Insight Settings Area

In Global Settings, under Sales accelerator click on Assignment rules.

Click on New Rule under Leads -> Select Lead assignment rule as shown below:

This will open a quick create form for new rule create form as shown below:

Under Rule name provide a specific name to your lead assignment rule.

Select eligible leads for this rule: you are provided with two options, either apply the assignment rule to all the leads being created in the system by choosing All Incoming leads or choose Specific leads

If you select the Specific leads, then you would be provided with drop down to select Segments.

Additionally, rule also allows to have additional conditions using the lead rows and specifying conditions on it or comparing it with specific values.

Choose Seller type: This will allow you to choose seller on basis of certain conditions or attributes specified. You can choose options from Any Seller to Specific Sellers or Sellers with matching attributes. Even Teams could be assigned.

Distribute leads by: Deals with distribution methods for lead across organisation.

This is implemented by 2 methods:

Round robin : Leads are distributed on a cyclical basis to sellers who are qualified to receive the lead, based on the conditions of the assignment rule.

Load balancing : Leads are distributed among sellers depending on their current workload. This helps ensure that all sellers are equally busy.

Manage Lead Capacity for Seller

Click on the Manage lead capacity for seller link as shown below in the image to navigate to Team Settings.

Team Settings: this list outs the seller/ users and teams present in the organisation.

Select one user as shown below. This will enable Set capacity button on the grid.

On click of the Set Capacity button, a quick view will open which will ask you to set the capacity of the maximum leads that can be handled by the particular seller.

Fill in the values and click save to set the capacity.

Monitoring under Assignment Rule

Leads or Opportunities that were not assigned even after the assignment rule application, would be listed under Monitoring. You may manually select them to be assigned to a seller.

Conclusion:

Sales Accelerator feature of Assignment rule for Lead and Opportunity does efficiently enhances the system with reducing the efforts required.

Thankyou, Ashitosh for your inputs in this blog.

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Examples for assignment rules and segments

• 2 contributors

In this section, we've used a few examples to explain how to create assignment rules and segments for different scenarios.

License and role requirements

Assign a lead to the account owner.

There are two ways to automate:

• Create a segment for leads with accounts and assign them to account owner .
• Use assignment rules to filter leads with accounts and assign them to account owner .

Let's look at each option in detail.

Create a segment for leads with accounts and assign them to account owner

In this approach, we'll filter the leads with accounts using segment and then assign these leads to the respective account owner using assignment rules. We recommend that you use this option when you're dealing with a large number of leads. It can enhance performance as conditions are distributed between segments and assignment rules.

Create the Segment leads from existing accounts segment, which only takes in leads with an associated parent account.

In the Assignment rules tab of the segment, create an assignment rule to identify the owner of the account and assign the lead to account owner. While choosing sellers, add the condition through the related entity Account (Owning User) where the Account equals to Lead.Parent Account for lead .

Save and activate the Segment leads from existing accounts segment.

All new leads from existing accounts automatically come into this segment and are assigned based on the configured assignment rule for this segment.

Use assignment rules to filter leads with accounts and assign them to account owner

In this approach, we'll use the assignment rules for both filtering the leads with accounts and assigning them to account owners.

Select the segment for which you want to assign leads to account owners. Here, we're using the default segment.

Create an assignment rule as follows:

In the Eligible leads for this rule section, select Parent account for lead > Contains data . This condition considers leads with a parent account and ignores leads without account.

In the Assign these leads to a seller, team, or queue section, add the condition through the related entity Account (Owning User) where the Account equals to Lead.Parent Account for lead . This condition identifies the owner of the account and assigns the lead to account owner.

Assign a lead to sellers with relevant skills or qualifications

Let's consider that you're a sales manager from a financial institution, responsible for selling insurance plans, credit cards, and other financial products to customers. When leads come in for insurance policy, you want to automatically assign the leads to qualified sellers who possess a minimum of an Insurance Level 1 certification and hold a Diploma or degree in finance .

Here we are considering the default segment while creating the assignment rule.

Create seller attributes for Insurance Level 1 certification and Diploma or degree in finance . Here we've created Insurance Certificate and Academic qualification , and added values as per the business requirement. More information: Set seller attributes and capacity

Apply the created attributes to the respective sellers. More information: Assign attributes and capacity to sellers

Create an assignment rule to assign leads related to insurance to sellers with the required certificate and qualification.

In the Eligible leads for this rule section, create a condition where Lead category equals to Insurance to filter leads with insurance. Here, we've customized the lead entity by adding Insurance as a category.

In the Assign these leads to a seller, team, or queue section, select Sellers with matching criteria from the dropdown list and then select the Use seller attributes defined for assignment rules option.

Create the following conditions as per the business rule:

If the other certificate levels are more than Level 1 , you can include those levels as the Level 1 insurance certificate is a minimum requirement.

• Academic qualification > Equals > Diploma - Finance , Graduate - Finance , and PG - Finance .

Any new lead that is related to insurance automatically comes into this assignment rule.

Assign a lead to the seller with matching business unit and lives in the same postal code

You want to route leads to sellers who share the same postal code and match the business unit. If you have a large number of regions, creating assignment rules for each region is difficult to manage. By using the dynamic matching criteria, you can create a single rule to assign leads to sellers who live in the same postal code as the lead and matches business unit.

Create the assignment rule and in the Assign these leads to a seller, team, or queue section, configure the section as described:

• Select Sellers with matching criteria from the dropdown list.
• Select the Use seller attributes defined for assignment rules option.

ZIP/Postal Code > Equals > $(address_1_postalcode) . The ZIP/Postal Code field is a system user field that needs to match with the ZIP/Postal Code in lead entity. As the ZIP/Postal Code field is of type string (a single line of text), use the logical name of the ZIP/Postal Code field ( address_1_postalcode ) from the lead entity to match system users . The syntax to add a string value is $( Logical name of the field ) .

Business Unit > Equals > Leads.Owning Business Unit . The Business unit field is an option set that is available in both lead and system user. Select the Leads.Owning Business Unit value from the dropdown list.

The created single rule automatically route every lead to the right seller in the right region.

Skip rules for self-created leads

In your organization, leads come from various sources, such as marketing campaigns, visitors from website, partners, and your sales people. The Work assignment feature automatically distribute leads to eligible sellers based on the rules that include leads that were created by sellers. Most often, the leads created by your sellers are routed to another seller based on the assignment rules. However, if you prefer the leads to be assigned to the sellers who actually generate them, you can implement rules to filter out leads created by other sellers. You can achieve this through the following process.

Customize the lead form to add a field to route to another seller. Create and add a custom field to the lead form to indicate whether the lead should be routed to another seller. For example, you can add a field called Route to another seller with values Yes or No .

Set the value for the field to No for leads that shouldn't be routed to another seller.

Categorize all leads containing the custom field to route to another seller as No into the Do not route leads segment. Create a segment called Do not route leads and then define the condition as Route to another seller > Equals > No . This condition filters out leads that shouldn't be routed to another seller.

New or updated leads fall into their respective segments.

Set highest priority to the segment with no assignment rules. If a lead satisfies conditions for multiple segments, then the segment with highest priority takes precedence. To ensure that leads remain with the seller who created the lead, set highest priority the Do not route leads segment. More information: Prioritize assignment rules

Assign leads generated from a campaign to product-specific sales teams

Your organization conducts an annual festive campaign that generates leads for the range of products offered by the organization. You've dedicated sales teams specializing in each product, and your objective is to ensure that the leads generated from the campaign are routed to the corresponding product specialist sales teams. You can achieve this through the following process.

Identify attributes between leads and team to match the products. Every specialized sales team has the Product Owned attribute that has information about product that the sales team owns, and lead has the Interested Product attribute that has information about the potential customer’s interest. More information: Set seller attributes and capacity

Filter leads with information about the product of interest that are coming from campaign and assigning them to the specialized sales team. When the eligible leads are already filtered in the segment definition, then you may ignore this step. Otherwise, create an assignment rule for the segment and under the eligible leads section, define conditions as described:

In Eligible leads for this rule section, add the conditions.

Interested Product > Contains data . This condition considers leads with a product of interest.

Source Campaign > Equals > Annual Festive Campaign . This condition considers leads that are generated from the annual festive campaign.

In Assign these leads to a seller, team, or queue section, select Teams with matching attributes from the dropdown list and add the condition Product Owned > Equals > Lead.Interested Product . This condition identifies the product owned by the team and assigns the lead to the team.

This ensures that all leads coming from the campaign are automatically assigned to the most appropriate sales team and the sellers within the team can nurture them to closure.

Related information

Create and activate assignment rules Create and activate segments Set seller attributes and capacity

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