Configuring Assignment Criteria

This chapter provides an overview of assignment groups and discusses how to configure lead, opportunity, and account assignment criteria.

Understanding Assignment Groups

An assignment group contains the criteria that the system uses to determine how to assign sales representatives to a lead or opportunity. After you create an assignment group, you can associate the assignment group with a territory tree. When a sales user adds a lead or opportunity and clicks the Assign Sales Rep button, the system uses the assignment group associated with the territory tree to determine how to select the sales representative and team. The system uses the following steps:

The system selects one or more appropriate territories by evaluating the lead or opportunity.

This system bases this evaluation on user-defined criteria and weights entered for the assignment group. The criteria could be the customer, product, region or industry. The system uses these criteria and weights to generate a score for each territory.
If you specify manual selection on the assignment group, the system allows the user to choose a sales representative or team from a list, which only contains representatives or teams from the selected territories.
If you specify automatic selection on the assignment group, the system uses user-defined options for the assignment group to choose a sales representative or team from the selected territories.

This table illustrates the possible assignment configurations that you can enter for an assignment group:

Lead and opportunity assignment configurations

The following examples show how the system assigns the sales representative if you use the following assignment group settings (see assignment group field definitions for more information):

Multiple Territories – 2: Search the tree to find the territories to which the sales representative is assigned, and if the user is assigned to multiple territories, find the two top-weighted territories.
All Teams: Within each territory, the system identifies all teams to which the user is assigned.
Single Rep: From each territory team, the system lists only one representative.
Primary Rep: The representative from each top-weighted territory is the primary representative.

The system identifies only the first one in the list as the primary representative for the lead or opportunity team.
No Business Unit Restriction: The system assigns the item to the primary representative, who, because there is no restriction, might or might not be in the same business unit as the current sales representative.

Example 1: Let's look at a single tree, where the system determines which territories in the tree are best suited to receive the assignment, based on the defined criteria and weights, and finds the most suitable single representative or whole team using the specified methods.

This table lists the data in the system and the criteria from which the system must select the most suitable territories for the assignment in this example:

Territory	Total Weight	Product	Weight	Region	Weight	Industry	Weight
Western	9	Freezers	5	West	4
Eastern	5	Refrigerators	5
Northern	3					Computers	3

Territory

Single Territory: The system selects Western, because, with a total weight of 9, it is the single highest weighted territory.
Multiple Territories: By default, the system looks for the two best suited territories, but you can increase the number of territories for which to search.

In the default case, the system selects the territories of Western, with a total weight of 9, and Eastern, with a total weight of 5.

Note. With multiple territories, you can search within a single team in each suitable territory or within all teams in each suitable territory.

In this single territory scenario, the system then uses the Western territory data, as listed in this table, to select the most suitable single representative or whole team within that territory:

Territory	Sales Representative	Last Assigned Date	Availability Count	Primary in Team?
Western	ABC	6/1/2002	10	Yes
Western	LMN	5/1/2002	2	No
Western	XYZ	4/1/2002	8	No

Based on the modes and options specified, the system finds:

Automatic Assignment

For each option in the automatic assignment mode, the system finds:

Primary Rep: The system selects ABC, because this representative is designated as the primary team member.
Round Robin, Time: The system selects XYZ, because, with a last assigned date of 4/1/2002, this representative has gone the longest without a new assignment.
Round Robin, Availability: The system selects LMN, because, with only two leads, this representative has the highest availability.

Manual Assignment

The system finds the single territory of Western as well as its sales representatives — ABC, LMN, and XYZ.

Select the sales representatives to assign.

Example 2: Let's look at a tree where territories overlap. The system determines which territories in the territory tree are most suited based on common factors and the defined criteria and weights. It also finds the most suitable single representative or whole team using the specified methods.

This table lists the data in the system and the criteria from which the system must select the matrix territory most suitable for the assignment:

Territory	Total Weight	Product	Weight	Region	Weight	Industry	Weight
Osborne Western	9	Pianos	5	West	4
Osborne Trucking	7	Pianos	5			Trucking	2
Trucking	2					Trucking	2

Territory

The system selects Osborne Western and Osborne Trucking, because these are the highest weighted territories with common factors. Together they form the matrix organization of Osborne and the matrix product of Pianos.

The system then uses the matrix territory data, which is listed in this table, to select the most suitable single representative or whole team within the territory:

Territory	Sales Representative	Last Assigned Date	Availability Count	Primary in Team?
Osborne Western	A	6/1/2002	2	Yes
Osborne Western	B	5/1/2002	1	No
Osborne Trucking	AA	5/1/2002	8	Yes
Osborne Trucking	BB	5/16/2002	6	No

The system must consider all teams in the multiple territories. Based on the specified modes and options, the system finds:

Return Search Results for

For the automatic assignment mode, the system returns results for each option:

Single Rep: The system selects one candidate for each team.

The system selects A and AA, because these are designated as the primary team members for each territory.
- Primary Rep: The system selects A as the primary matrix team member, because this representative is the first in the list.
- Round Robin, Time: The system selects B and AA, because these representatives have gone the longest on their teams without a new assignment.
- Round Robin, Availability: The system selects B and BB, because these representatives have the least number of assignments on their teams and, therefore, have the highest availability.
Whole Team: The system selects the whole team from each territory.

The system selects A, B, AA, and BB. It adds the whole team to the lead's sales team and selects A, the first representative in the list, as the primary sales representative for the sales team.

Manual Assignment

The system finds the multiple territories of Osborne Western and Osborne Trucking as well as all members of each team — A, B, AA, and BB. Select the sales representatives to add to the sales team, and select the primary sales team representative. You can have only one primary.

Configuring Assignment Criteria

To configure assignment groups, use the Configure Assignment Groups component (RSF_ASSIGN_CONFIG).

This section discusses how to:

Create assignment groups.
Identify component records to use.
Define criteria and their weights.

Pages Used to Configure Assignment Criteria

Page Name	Object Name	Navigation	Usage
Assign Group	RSF_ASSIGN_GROUP	Set Up CRM, Product Related, Sales, Territory, Configure Assignment Groups	Identify parameters for assigning leads or opportunities within a specified group.
Component Records	RSF_ASSIGN_RECS	From the Assign Group page, select the Component Records tab.	Identify components for defining a tree and its territories, and define records and fields for the round robin assignment method.
Criteria	RSF_ASSIGN_CRIT	From the Assign Group page, select the Criteria tab.	Identify weighted search and match criteria to find candidates for assignment.
Component	RSF_ASSIGN_COMP	From the Criteria page, click the Component link.	Determine which components use the specified field.

Creating Assignment Groups

Access the Assign Group page.

Assignment Group

Assignment Owner

Select an owner for the assignment group. Select Sales if you use the assignment group to assign sales representatives to leads and opportunities. Select Account Management if you use the assignment group to assign sales representatives to accounts.

If you select Account Management, the system sets the following defaults and makes the fields unavailable for editing:

Assign To: Single Territory
Return search results for: Entire Team

Assign To

Single Territory	Select to have the system select sales representatives or teams in the single top-weighted territory.
Multiple Territories	Select to have the system select sales representatives or teams in multiple top-weighted territories.
How Many?	If you select Multiple Territories, enter the number of territories to search.
Single Team or All Teams	If you select Multiple Territories, you can select Single Team to assign representatives only from within the single team that best fits the assign criteria, or select All Teams to assign representatives from within all teams that match the assign criteria. If you select Multiple Territories, the system selects All Teams by default. You can override this.

Return search results for

Single Rep

Select to assign to a single territory team member of the chosen territory.

Whole Team

Select to assign to all territory team members of the chosen territory.

When you select Multiple Territories, the system selects Whole Team by default. You can override this.

Note. In PeopleSoft Sales, there are territory teams, sales teams, account teams, and lead or opportunity teams. The territory team, which is the team that you use here, is the group of individual sales users who are assigned to a territory.

Choose from multiple matches

Use the Assignment Mode group box to select the assignment mode.

Automatic Assignment

Select to allow the system to assign leads or opportunities within the assignment group.

When selected, the Automatic Options group box becomes available.

Manual Selection

Select to enable sales users to assign leads or opportunities manually within the assignment group.

When selected, search results are listed as candidates for assignment when the user clicks the Assign Sales User button on the Lead - Assign or Opportunity - Assign page.

Note. To enable sales users to assign sales representatives manually to leads or opportunities, you must select the Manual Selection check box, and select the Manually Reassign Leads, Manually Reassign Opportunities, and the assignment group Manual Selection check boxes on the Sales Access profile.

Use the Automatic Options group box to evaluate multiple matches automatically to narrow the selections to a single representative. This area is unavailable if you select any of these options:

Manual Selection.
Single Territory and Whole Team.
Multiple Territories, All Teams, and Whole Team.

Primary Rep

Select to have the system evaluate the territory team and select only the team member who is designated as the primary on the Territory page.

Round Robin and Time or Availability

Select to have the system evaluate the territory teams to select candidates based on either time or availability parameters.

Select Time to identify the sales representatives who have gone the longest without a recent assignment according to the record and field set on the Round Robin - Last Assigned tab on the Component Records page and the time stamp on the Territory Definitions page.
Select Availability to identify, according to the record and field set on the Round Robin - Availability tab on the Component Records page, the representatives who have the least number of leads or opportunities assigned to them with the following status:
- For Leads, the status of New, Open, Accepted, Referred, Imported, Working, Converted to Opportunity, Rejected, Deferred or Turnback.
- For Opportunities, the status of Open.

Restrict to Business Unit

Assign within Business Unit

Select to permit assignments only to sales representatives in the same business unit as the business unit to which the lead or opportunity belongs.

Identifying Component Records

Access the Component Records page.

Components Tab

Select the Components tab.

Description

Enter the components to use for the assignment group. The components that you enter appear on the Round Robin - Last Assigned and Round Robin - Availability tabs, and they populate the Components field on the Criteria page.

Round Robin - Last Assigned Tab

Select the Round Robin - Last Assigned tab.

Last Assigned Record and Field

Enter the record and field to read on the specified component to determine which representative has gone the longest without a recent assignment.

The Last Assigned Date on the Lead Entry and Opportunity Details components is used in the Round Robin - Time assignment method. The time stamp on the Territory Definitions page is initially set to 01/02/1000 and updated each time that an individual who is a sales user is assigned to the territory and each time that a lead or opportunity is assigned to that individual.

See Creating or Editing Territories.

Round Robin - Availability Tab

Select the Round Robin - Availability tab.

Availability Record and Field

The system internally counts the available leads and opportunities. Enter the record and field for the system to read (from the specified component) to determine which representatives have the least number of leads or opportunities assigned to them.

Defining Criteria and Their Weights

Access the Criteria page.

Weight Definitions

Click to access the Assignment Weights page to determine or define weights to choose from for assignment criteria or to add new weights to the assignment group.

See Setting Up Assignment Weights.

Details Tab

Code and Description

Enter a code and a description for criteria to use for the assignment group.

Required

Select to identify data that must exist to allow an assignment.

For example, if you indicate that a product ID is required, but no product ID is captured prior to clicking the Assign Sales User button on the Lead - Assign or Opportunity - Assign page, the system displays an error message saying that the required criteria product ID is missing and that you must enter required criteria to make the assignment.

Required data must have an assigned weight. The default assigned weight is 0 - Ignore. You can and probably will want to override this, especially for all required data.

Warning! You must identify required data and assign weights for all required data.

Weight

The degree to which criteria should be considered in finding a match.

Some weights lists have anchors, or low, middle, and high values, with other values in between. For example, the weights that PeopleSoft delivers predefined for the SHARE setID (as shown in the example) are in increments of one (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) but have anchors of 0 = Ignore, 1 = Least Important, 5 = Important, and 9 = Most Important.

Click the Weight Definitions link to determine weight definitions.

Record Tab

Select the Record tab.

Type

Controls whether a single value or a range of values is permitted for a match.

For example, suppose that you want to search for only those representatives who work with the same customer as the logged in sales user or specified sales representative, select the customer type of Single. If you want the system to search for representatives within a range of postal codes, select the postal code type of Range.

Specify the beginning and end of a criteria range on the Territory Definitions page.

Note. Currently, the system does not process dates as a criteria range.

See Creating Territory Trees.

Record and Key Field

Enter the specific record and select the field to use to prompt for the criteria data to make available for an assignment group.

Component Tab

Select the Component tab.

Component

Click to access the Component page to determine which components use the criteria field and from where, in the component buffer, each criteria field comes.