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By Stacy O’Leary

I confess: I love Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules almost as much as I love the Approval Process . A good set of Lead Assignment Rules will buy you endless friends in both sales and marketing, and will make your incoming data sparkle and look perfect (even if it is not!) In this guide, I’ll be talking about the initial Lead sort, upon creation.

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rule Example

• Criteria #1: If State = California, assign to Stacy
• Criteria #2: If Country = United Kingdom, assign to Ben
• Criteria #3: If Country = France, assign to Lucy
• Criteria #4: If Annual Revenue is greater than $500,000,000 USD, assign to “High Roller Queue”

Planning Lead Assignment Rules

Discovery: questions to ask.

• Where are the new Leads coming from? Marketo? HubSpot? Other integrated systems? Web forms? Are there any examples you look at? Make friends with the people who run these systems, you need to have a good relationship because you’re going to need their help.
• What fields are populated on these newly created Leads? What fields are required? If it’s minimal, can you get more information? Generally, the more information you have, the easier it is to sort.
• What if a Lead comes in from one of your Partners? What if a Lead comes in from one of your competitors? From one of your employees? Are there any kinds of Leads that should never be distributed out to your team, like students or media inquiries? (Remember – ANYONE with access to the internet can fill out your form! They do not have to be a legitimate prospect!)
• Who is covering what territories? Do you have any territories that don’t have a sales rep yet? Do all new Leads have enough data to determine territories?
• What about the Leads that don’t meet any criteria at all? Where will they go? Who will work them?

Refining the requirements

• Our new Leads, almost always, come from Marketo . They could come from a Marketo form, or a list imported from a trade show, but Marketo is the system that pushes them to Salesforce. If a person creates their own Lead, we do not want to take it away from them.
• We always have: first name, last name, lead source, email, company, state and country. We sometimes have # of Employees, but that’s pretty much all we know about them at the moment of creation.
• Any Lead that comes in from a Partner should be directed to our channel team. We don’t want to market to competitors, employees, or students.
• We have a territory plan defined by Sales, and we’d also like to separate prospects for the UK and France, though we do not have a sales rep for those areas yet.
• If something comes in that we cannot otherwise sort, let’s put it in a holding place and let marketing send out generic nurture emails. If a person in this holding place takes interest, we can always give it to the sales team later.

• Partners (any Lead that comes in from a Partner company)
• Disqualified (any Lead that comes in from a competitor, is an employee, or is a student)
• UK + France (any Lead where Country = United Kingdom, or France)
• Unsorted (any Lead that does not meet any criteria)

Creating Lead Assignment Criteria

Leads that shouldn’t be distributed, next criteria.

The Final Empty Criteria

Activate the Lead Assignment Rules

• Leads can only be sorted by a field value at the moment it was sorted.
• The Lead Router does not auto-convert Leads to Contacts
• You cannot deactivate a User license if that person is part of the Lead Assignment Rules (even if the Lead Assignment Rules have been deactivated.)
• Create a report for yourself, for that last criteria – Leads that are unsorted. This way you can review them periodically and see if there’s enough volume to justify sorting them in a certain way.

Stacy O'Leary

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Guide to lead assignment rules in Salesforce

Use SFDC lead assignment rules to get more done, create a better experience, and close deals faster.

Rachel Burns Jul 24, 2023

15 min read

Table of contents

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What are Salesforce lead assignment rules?

What if your sales team could spend their valuable time connecting with prospects and closing deals — instead of losing time doing admin work like assigning and organizing leads?

When you automate lead assignment and routing, your sales team can:

Boost sales team productivity and efficiency

Prevent high-quality leads from slipping through the cracks

Create a better experience for potential customers

Speed up your entire sales pipeline to close more deals, faster

In this blog post, we'll discuss the ins and outs of Salesforce lead assignment. We'll cover the benefits, how to plan your lead assignment strategy, and a step-by-step walkthrough of adding lead assignment rules in Salesforce. We'll also explore the power of scheduling automation to simplify and speed up lead assignment, routing, and qualification.

Key takeaways:

Lead assignment rules help sales teams boost productivity, respond to leads faster, and make better data-driven decisions. 

Matching leads with the right sales reps and teams creates a better customer experience by responding to leads faster and giving them personalized attention.

Before you set up your lead assignment rules, work with your sales, marketing, and RevOps teams to understand your lead generation processes and sales team structure.

Within Salesforce lead management settings, rule entries are the individual criteria and actions. A “lead assignment rule” refers to a set of rule entries. 

Automating lead routing , qualification, and booking with Calendly helps your team be more efficient and organized while creating a better experience for prospective customers.

6 benefits of creating lead assignment rules in Salesforce

Why should your team take the time to set up lead assignment rules in Salesforce? Here are six great reasons:

Ensure leads are assigned to the right reps and teams: Lead assignment rules mean each incoming lead is directed to the salesperson or team who has the relevant expertise and skills to engage and convert that lead. Automated lead assignment also prevents leads from falling through the cracks by making sure each lead is assigned to a rep or team, rather than relying on manual assignment.

Respond to leads faster: With lead assignment rules, leads are automatically assigned to the right salesperson, reducing response time and increasing the chances of converting leads into customers .

Boost sales team productivity: Automating lead assignment reduces manual work for RevOps teams and sales managers. Lead assignment rules also help identify and prioritize leads more likely to convert, saving time and resources that would otherwise be wasted on pursuing poor-fit leads. These time savings let sales teams focus on nurturing leads and closing deals.

Create a better customer experience: Leads can be assigned to sales reps who have relevant industry or product expertise, understand their unique needs, and can provide personalized solutions. This tailored approach creates a better experience for leads, which results in more conversions and higher customer satisfaction.

Improve sales forecasting: With well-defined lead assignment rules, you can gather more accurate data on lead distribution and conversion rates. This data can be used for sales forecasting, data driven decision-making, and resource allocation.

How to create lead assignment rules in Salesforce

Step 1: build your lead assignment strategy.

Before you go into your Salesforce instance and set up lead assignment rules, you need to figure out what exactly those rules will be. The options are limitless — where should you start?

It’s time to bring RevOps, sales, and marketing together to answer some questions:

Lead sources: Where do leads come from? Do we use marketing forms through Salesforce web-to-lead forms or a third-party integration? Are we importing leads via the data import wizard?

Sales team structure: How is the sales team structured? Are different teams or individuals specialized in specific products, industries, use cases, or regions?  

Lead data: What info do we request from new leads? Which standard and custom fields do we require?

Sales territories: How are sales territories defined? Are there specific regions, countries, or territories we should take into account for lead assignment?

Integrations : Do we have any third-party integrations with lead assignment or distribution features? Are we using those features?

Special circumstances: Are there any priority levels or tiers for leads that require special attention? For example, do we have a designated rep or queue for leads with complex needs and use cases?

Poor fits: What should we do with leads who don’t meet any of our criteria?

It’s a lot of information to gather and organize, but it’s important to learn as much as possible up front to cover every scenario and equip your sales team with accurate data. Putting this time and effort in now will pay off tenfold in productivity once your lead rules are in place!

Step 2: Set up lead assignment rules in Salesforce

You’re almost ready to enter your lead assignment rules in SFDC . First, let’s go over some terminology. We’ve been talking about lead assignment rules as individual directives: “If the lead matches X, then do Y.” Within Salesforce lead management settings, a “lead assignment rule” refers to a set of rule entries. Rule entries are the individual criteria and actions (“If X, then do Y”). An assignment rule can consist of up to 3,000 rule entries, and you can only have one active assignment rule at a time.

For example, a rule entry can assign all leads interested in a particular product to a queue of reps who are experts on that product. In Salesforce, a lead queue is essentially a bucket for unassigned leads, and you can choose which sales reps can pull leads from each queue.

Another rule entry can assign all leads from companies with over 5,000 employees to your top enterprise sales rep.

To create a lead assignment rule in Salesforce: 

From Setup, enter “Assignment Rules” in the Quick Find box, then select Lead Assignment Rules.

Enter the rule name. (Example: 2023 Standard Lead Rules)

Select “Set this as the active lead assignment rule” to activate the rule immediately.

Click Save.

Click the name of the rule you just created.

Click New in the Rule Entries section.

Enter an order number that tells Salesforce when to run this rule entry in relation to other rule entries. For example, if you want this to be the first criteria Salesforce looks at when assigning a lead, enter number one.

Select the rule criteria. What attributes must the lead have before Salesforce applies the rule entry? You can use any standard or custom field in the lead record for your criteria. For example, you want to assign leads to your U.S.-based enterprise sales team, so the company size field must be equal to or greater than 5,000 and the country field must equal the United States. You can include up to 25 filter criteria.

Choose the user or queue to be the assignee if the lead meets the criteria. For example, assign to the U.S.-based enterprise sales team queue.

Optional: Choose an email template to use when notifying the new lead owner. After you set up your lead rules, you can also use Salesforce Flow automations to notify lead owners via other channels. For example, at Calendly, we integrate Salesforce with Slack, and a workflow automatically notifies sales reps via Slack when a lead is assigned to them.

Salesforce goes through the rule entries in order until it finds one that matches the lead's info, then routes the lead accordingly. 

Let's say you have small business, mid-market, and enterprise sales team queues. Your first three rule entries would match company size to each of those three queues. If they don't have a company size listed, or the company size doesn't match any of the values in your rule entries, Salesforce will move on to the industry rule entries.

To make sure no leads fall through the cracks, you also need to set a default lead owner. If the assignment rules fail to locate an owner, or you don’t set up assignment rules, web-generated leads are assigned to the default lead owner.

To select a default lead owner:

From Setup, enter “Lead Settings” in the Quick Find box, then select Lead Settings and click Edit.

Define the Default Lead Owner. The Default Lead Owner can be a specific user or a queue.

Save your settings.

Salesforce lead assignment rule examples

As we mentioned earlier, your rule entries can include up to 25 filter criteria.

Simple rules include just one filter criteria:

By country or state/province: Route leads from specific states or countries to sales representatives who understand the regional market. You need this rule if your team uses sales territories to divide leads. For example, if the state/province equals Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, or Washington, assign the lead to the West Coast queue.

By language: Assign leads to sales reps who speak the same language.

By industry: Assign leads from different industries to salespeople who have experience working with those industries.

By company size: Assign leads based on the size of the company, assigning larger companies to a dedicated enterprise sales team.

Complex rules use two or more filter criteria. For example, you could route leads from specific states or provinces to salespeople based on their sales territory and the company size. If you have a particular rep (Bob) working enterprise leads on the West Coast, your filter criteria could say: If the state/province equals Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, or Washington, and the company size equals greater than 5,000, assign the lead to Bob.

These are just a few examples. Lead assignment rules can be customized to fit your team’s and customers’ needs. Review your strategy to choose the right combination of criteria for your sales processes, products, and customers.

What does the built-in Salesforce lead process look like in action?

A website visitor named Nora fills out a contact form to learn more about your product. She shares her name, email address, company name (Acme Inc.), and company size. You use Salesforce’s built-in web-to-lead forms , so Nora’s form submission automatically creates a lead record.

Your team has set up lead assignment rules that assign leads to sales queues based on their company size. Acme Inc. has 5,000 employees, so Nora is automatically assigned to the enterprise sales team queue.

Enterprise sales team queue members receive an email notification that a new lead has been added to the queue. Taylor, an enterprise sales rep in Acme Inc.’s territory, assigns Nora’s lead record to themself.

Taylor emails Nora to set up a qualification call.

Nora, who has been waiting to hear back from your team, agrees to meet with Taylor. After some email back-and-forth, they find a time that works.

What are the limitations of Salesforce’s built-in lead assignment rules?

Salesforce’s built-in lead assignment rules are a great place to start, but there are a few critical limitations, especially for enterprise sales teams:

Single level of evaluation: Salesforce assignment rules operate based on a single level of evaluation, meaning that once a rule matches the criteria and assigns a lead, the evaluation process stops. Your team might miss out on important info, like a complex use case or unique industry, when matching the lead with a rep.

No built-in round robin distribution: Round robin lead distribution is the process of assigning leads to reps based on factors like team member availability or equal distribution for a balanced workload. Salesforce lead assignment rules don't include an easy way to set up round robin distribution — you need an additional tool like Pardot, one of the round robin apps on AppExchange , complex Apex code , or a third-party lead routing platform .

No lead escalation settings: Lead escalation is the process of flagging a lead to higher levels of management or specialized teams for further assistance or action. This process comes into play when a lead requires additional attention or intervention beyond the assigned salesperson or team's capabilities. Unfortunately, Salesforce doesn’t have built-in settings for lead escalation rules. If your customer success team uses Service Cloud, you can set up escalation rules for customer support case escalations, but this feature isn’t included in Sales Cloud.

High maintenance for large organizations: Managing and maintaining a comprehensive set of assignment rules can become challenging and time-consuming in large organizations with complex sales structures and multiple teams or regions. Sure, you can include up to 3,000 rule entries in a single lead assignment rule, but that’s a lot to set up and keep up to date — especially if you’re trying to save your team time, not add to their workload.

Built-in Salesforce lead assignment rules and automations are a solid starting point, but what about automating lead qualification and booking? If you use Salesforce on its own, your reps might still spend a ton of time on lead reassignment to balance their workload, manual lead qualification, and email back-and-forths to schedule sales calls.

That’s where Calendly comes in.

How to automate lead assignment, qualification, and booking with Calendly

Your scheduling automation platform can be an excellent lead generation, qualification, and routing tool — especially when it integrates with Salesforce. Calendly’s Salesforce integration helps your team be more efficient and organized while creating a better experience for prospective customers.

When a lead books a meeting via a sales rep or team’s Calendly booking page, Salesforce automatically creates a new lead, contact, or opportunity. If the lead already exists in your Salesforce instance, the event is added to the lead’s existing record, so you don’t end up with duplicate lead records or time-consuming manual reassignment.

What if you don’t want to let just anyone book a meeting with your team? When you add Calendly Routing to your marketing forms, you can show scheduling pages only to leads who meet your qualifications, like prospects from specific industries or companies of a certain size. That way, your busy team can spend time on the most valuable deals.

Calendly Routing works with HubSpot , Marketo , Pardot , and Calendly forms and is built for your Salesforce CRM. You can use any form field (email, domain, company name) in any Salesforce standard object to match visitors with their account owner. Account lookups let you send known leads or customers from your website form directly to their account owner’s booking page, without needing to manually reassign leads to the right rep.

Remember the lead assignment example we walked through earlier featuring Nora from Acme Inc.? Here's what that process looks like when you add Calendly:

Nora fills out your “contact sales” form, which is already built in HubSpot, connected to Calendly Routing , and enriched with Clearbit .

She enters her email address in the form, and Clearbit fills in the company name, size, and industry. This shortens the form, so Nora only has to input her name and job title.

Calendly checks to see if Acme Inc. has an account in your Salesforce instance. They don’t, so the next step is lead qualification .

Based on Nora’s information — company size, industry, job title — she’s a highly qualified lead, so she’s automatically routed to the booking page for your enterprise sales team.

Nora is happy about that, and immediately books a meeting time that works for her, with the exact team she needs to talk to.

On the backend, Calendly’s Round Robin meeting distribution is set to optimize for availability, so it assigns the meeting to the first available sales rep — in this case, Taylor. This automation helps your team respond to meeting requests faster, hold initial sales calls sooner, and balance the workload across reps.

Calendly creates a lead record in Salesforce with the info Nora entered into your website form (including the data from Clearbit) and an activity log of any meetings she books with your team via Calendly. Salesforce automatically makes Taylor the lead owner.

If you were relying on Salesforce’s built-in lead assignment rules, Nora’s lead record would have gone to an enterprise sales queue, and she would have had to wait for a rep to pick up the lead and reach out to her to book a meeting.

“ A good tool is one that’s so simple, sales reps can basically forget about it and let the meetings roll in. That’s essentially what happened when we implemented Calendly. ”

Sales Enablement Manager at SignPost

What happens if a lead doesn’t qualify for a meeting? Instead of sending them to a booking page, you can display a custom message with next steps, ask them for more information, or redirect them to a specific URL, like a piece of gated content or a webinar signup page.

Automating lead assignment with Calendly Routing has been a game changer for RCReports , a compensation analysis solution for accountants and business valuators. Before connecting Calendly Routing with their Salesforce instance, RCReports’ AEs spent at least five hours a month reassigning leads booked on the wrong calendar. This created a disjointed customer experience and frustration for the sales and marketing teams.

“ Now that we’ve implemented Calendly’s routing feature with Salesforce integration, demos are always booked with the correct AE, reducing friction for both our team and the customer. ”

Abbie Deaver

Director of Marketing at RCReports

Users on Calendly’s Teams plan and above can connect Calendly to Salesforce. The full suite of Salesforce routing features , including routing by Salesforce ownership, is available on Calendly’s Enterprise plan.

To learn more about Calendly Routing, get in touch with our sales team .

Spend less time on manual lead assignment and more time closing deals

When you automate Salesforce lead assignment and routing, high-value leads stop slipping through the cracks, the workload is balanced across the team, leads are matched with the sales reps best equipped to help them, and team members have more time to focus on connecting with prospects and closing deals. 

The results? A more productive team, faster sales cycle, higher conversion rates, and better customer experience.

Webinar: How Calendly Uses Calendly to Close More Deals

Rachel Burns

Rachel is a Content Marketing Manager at Calendly. When she’s not writing, you can find her rescuing dogs, baking something, or extolling the virtue of the Oxford comma.

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Leandata showcases power of modern revenue orchestration at opsstars 2022, leandata announces winners of the 2022 opsstars awards, what are lead assignment rules in salesforce.

Lead assignment rules are a powerful feature within Salesforce to assist your team’s automation of its lead generation and customer support processes. Assignment rules in Salesforce are used to define to whom your Leads and Cases (customer questions, issues or feedback) are assigned based on any one of a number of specified criteria you determine. 

Organizations typically develop lead assignment rules for their GTM processes or flows:

• Rules for inbound Leads
• Rules for website-generated Leads
• Rules for importing Leads from an event

For case assignments, a company might establish one case assignment rule for weekdays and another assignment rule for weekends and holidays. 

A lead or case assignment rule often consists of multiple rule entries to specify exactly how leads and cases are assigned throughout your go-to-market teams. For example, related to customer service inquiries, a standard case assignment rule might have multiple entries. Cases with “Type equals Gold” are assigned to the Gold Level service queue, cases with “Type equals Silver” are assigned to the Silver Level service” queue, and so on. 

As organizations grow and scale, they operationalize multiple GTM motions: inbound, outbound, account-based, upsell/cross-sell, and hybrid. However, many are limited to having just one rule in Salesforce.

As a work-around, many organizations create one massive lead assignment ruleset. They then wedge all of their rule entries into that one big ruleset, regardless of how many different motions that represents. Over time, Salesforce lead assignment rules can quickly become unmanageable .

This post covers the best practices for Salesforce lead and case assignment rules. The ultimate goal is to fully engaging your hard-won leads and speed up your organization’s time-to-revenue.

How to Define Assignment Rules

Your Salesforce administrator can only have one rule in effect at any particular moment in your go-to-market motions, and that assignment rule is intended to both automate lead generation processes and other customer-facing processes routed through your CRM. 

Lead assignment rules specify how leads are assigned to users or queues as they are created manually, captured from your website, or imported via SFDC’s Data Import Wizard.

Case assignment rules determine how cases are assigned to users or put into queues as they are created, either manually or through the use of Web-to-Case, Email-to-Case, On-Demand Email-to-Case, the Self-Service portal, the Customer Portal, Outlook, or other data generation applications.

Criteria for Lead Assignment Rules

Okay, so you’ve decided that lead assignment rules in Salesforce make sense for your revenue operations team – now what?

Well, first, you’ll need to determine the edition of your Salesforce instance. Lead assignment rules are available in the Group, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions of SFDC. Case assignment rules, conversely, are available only in the Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.

With regard to User Permissions, to view assignment rules, you’ll need View Setup and Configuration permissions. However, to create or change assignment rules, you’ll need Customize Application. If you are not your organization’s Salesforce administrator, you should check with them before attempting to head off on your own.

How to Create Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules

Creating lead and case assignment rules in Salesforce is a relatively straightforward process. 

• Login to Salesforce and select Setup in the upper right corner of the horizontal navigation bar.
• In the Setup search box , type “assignment rules” and then select either Lead Assignment Rules or Case Assignment Rules.
• Select New to create a new assignment rule.
• In the Rule Name box, type a name and specify whether it should be active for leads or cases created manually and by those created automatically by web and email. When done, click Save .
• Click open your newly created rule and select New in the Rule Entries to specify your rule criteria.
• Step 1 in the “Enter the rule entry” window requires you to enter an Order for your new rule (the Order is the order in which the entry is processed, like a queue).
• In Step 2, you determine whether your new rule is based on meeting a set of criteria or a formula. In the Run this rule if the dropdown box, select either “criteria are met” or “formula evaluates to true.”
• Lastly, in Step 3, select the user or queue to whom your rule will assign your new lead or case (use the lookup feature to find specific users or a queue). After completing Step 3, select Save .

Why Are Your Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules Not Working?

If you discover your lead or case assignment rules are not working, here are a few tips to quickly troubleshoot the root cause.

First, check to ensure the assignment rule is active. Remember, only one case or lead assignment rule can be active at one time. Secondly, ensure the record is assigned to the correct user or queue.

Make certain to select the checkbox Assign using active assignment rule . In support of this step, enable field History tracking on case or lead owner, as well as add object History (case or lead) in your page layout. 

One common problem is overlapping rule entries, or rule entries in the wrong order. With dozens of rule entries, many will overlap, causing records to get assigned unpredictably. For example, if entry #1 assigns California leads to John, and entry #2 assigns Demo Request leads to Jane, then John might wonder why he’s receiving Demo Requests leads who are supposed to go to Jane. 

Assignment Rule Examples

The image, below, shows sample rule entries being entered into Salesforce for a variety of “what if” situations:

• Junk leads containing “test” are sent to an unassigned queue
• Demo requests are routed directly to SDR 3
• Leads at accounts with over $100 million in annual revenue are routed to AE 1
• Leads in certain states are sent to their respective representatives

How LeanData Simplifies Salesforce Lead Assignment

Creating lead and assignment rules in Salesforce is relatively straightforward. However, as your GTM motions become more and more complex, it becomes necessary to populate that one rule with multiple defining rule entries. As you grow and scale, your rule threatens to become unwieldy. Then these problems arise:

• Difficulty in both comprehending and managing
• Poor visibility, making it difficult to troubleshoot and validate
• Restrictions allowing only the criteria on the routed record

LeanData’s lead routing flow and assignment solution is a native Salesforce application that allows users to create flows in an easy-to-understand visual graph. Its visible representation of an organization’s desired lead flow affords many benefits to users, including:

• Easier ability to visualize and understand complex flows
• Real-time visibility of the routing of leads and the ability to quickly troubleshoot and make adjustments
• At-a-glance ability to use information on matched records for routing decisions and actions

Assignment rules in Salesforce are a relatively easy-to-learn feature that can be very quickly implemented, delivering a flexible and powerful logic to your CRM processes. Automating your lead and customer processes will accelerate your GTM motions and deliver your organization a sustainable competitive advantage.

For more best practices, read the eBook, “ Best Practices for a Winning B2B Marketing Data Strategy .”

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Ray Hartjen

Ray Hartjen is an experienced writer for the tech industry and published author. You can connect with Ray on both LinkedIn  &  Twitter .

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How to Automate Lead Assignment for Salesforce Platforms

Lead assignment in Salesforce is crucial for making sure sales-ready leads reach the right person to make contact, at the right time.

Exactly how leads are handed over from marketing to sales should never be assumed or taken lightly. Lead assignment is a crucial step in making sure sales-ready leads reach the right person to make contact, at the right time. Which is why automating lead assignment for Salesforce platforms, from Account Engagement to Sales Cloud, or Marketing Cloud to Sales Cloud, is so important.

The aim for any marketer is to assign inbound leads in the most efficient way, and the lead assignment features of Salesforce enable us to do just that.

If you’ve been assigning leads manually until now, you’re about to have your world changed. 

And if you’re already assigning leads to sales reps using automated features in your Salesforce accounts, don’t exit just yet. Stick around to ensure you’re following best practices and making lead assignment (also known as lead routing) as seamless as it can be.

For this guide, we’re going to assume you are using Sales Cloud alongside Pardot and/or Marketing Cloud. This means there are two parts to ensuring lead assignment runs smoothly. The first is integrating and configuring your Salesforce products to work together, and the second is the setup of Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce.

Part 1 - Configuring your Salesforce products

Integration.

It’s somewhat obvious, but the first essential step is to connect your platforms using the Salesforce Connector (for Account Engagement aka Pardot), or Marketing Cloud Connect, depending on which you use.

Connecting Pardot and Sales Cloud using the Salesforce Connector is fairly straightforward, and essentially means the two platforms are able to ‘talk’ and share data, rather than marketers needing to manually export and import lead data.

You’ll find the Salesforce Connector in the AppExchange, and an implementation guide is provided by Salesforce here , including considerations before you install. 

You’ll want to use the V2 Connector , so if you’re already using the connector but haven't upgraded yet, be sure to do that.

Marketing Cloud Connect, for connecting Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud Engagement, is a little more challenging, so we’ve provided a full guide here.

Marketing Data Sharing

After installing the Pardot-Salesforce Connector, you’ll see an option for ‘Marketing Data Sharing’ which allows you to restrict which Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, and/or custom objects are eligible to sync from Salesforce to Pardot. This is ideal for those with multiple Business Units but can work well for those with just one, too.

What’s great about MDS is it gives you more control over when prospect and lead records are created, which is all part and parcel of ensuring correct lead management.

For a deep dive into MDS and to configure the settings in the best way for your business, have a read of this dedicated blog: How to Use Marketing Data Sharing in Pardot & Salesforce .

Understand sync behaviours

With your platforms connected, take some time to understand exactly how the two can and will sync . You can set either Pardot or Salesforce as the ‘master’ values, meaning if there are differences in a record between the two platforms, one will be used to override the other. You can also choose to ‘Use the most recently updated record’.

For Account Engagement and Sales Cloud, as a general rule, prospect records sync every two to four minutes. Most records sync immediately, but Account Engagement processes sync queues with over 400 records in batches. Standard batch processing syncs 12,000 records per hour. 

Having said this, certain activities can trigger a sync, and this can be at a prospect, trigger, or system level. We have a full guide to Pardot and Salesforce sync behaviours , which we recommend reading if you’re new to this topic, or to sense check that your current sync behaviours are correct and without errors!

For a free audit of your Account Engagement , Salesforce , or Marketing Cloud account, including checks of your integration and sync behaviours, get in touch .

Part 2 - Setup of lead assignment 

Planning lead assignment and criteria.

Let’s assume you have successfully connected and synced accounts. You are now ready to plan and implement your lead assignment, using preset lead criteria.

Remember, there’s a difference between implicit and explicit leads and you can determine this based on your lead scoring and grading . 

• Explicit leads: are the right fit for your business because they match the demographics of your ideal customers. For example, they are the right decision-maker within the right type of company and industry.
• Implicit leads: are prospects who show a keen interest in your business and demonstrate buying intent.

The ideal sales-ready lead will meet both your explicit and implicit lead criteria. So, the very first item on your to-do list is to agree and document what makes a qualified lead . This should be a collaborative effort between marketing and sales teams.

Download the ‘ How to Qualify Leads’ eBook for a step-by-step guide to planning and implementing lead qualification.

Only once you have a clear definition of a sales-ready lead, can you plan who should receive such leads, when, and how. Some considerations are:

• Do sales team members have designated regions or countries?
• Are there priority team members who should receive leads first?
• Should leads be assigned by their product or service interest ( Scoring Categories help with this)?
• Are there types of leads we don’t want to contact and what happens to these?
• Do leads from different sources require different teams or treatment?

Use these considerations to map out your precise criteria, such as:

Criteria 1: Unqualified leads - don’t assign those from regions we don’t service.

Criteria 2: ABM leads - high-value targets must be assigned to a specific sales rep.

Criteria 3: Country - all remaining leads must be assigned to their country-specific sales team.

Again, document your lead assignment plan offline first, before implementing anything in your Salesforce accounts. This really helps to get a clear picture of what will happen and allow you to sense check before changing any settings that could cause problems later.

How to create a Lead Assignment Rule in Salesforce

You’ve got your lead assignment criteria sorted and you’re ready to get things set up. Enter the aptly named ‘Lead Assignment Rule’ in Salesforce.

Navigate to the ‘Marketing’ section in Salesforce and select ‘Lead Assignment Rules’.

Here’s where you create your Lead Assignment Rule but heads up, you can only have one active rule at a time. 

Now note that when you create a rule, you’ll specify the order that each criteria will be processed. Therefore, it’s easiest to input in priority order, with the most important rule criteria first.

Once you’ve entered your rule criteria (side note, you need to make sure you have the data values to match the rule!) you can choose the assignment action.

There are three options for lead assignment and these are:

• User - assign to a specific Salesforce user, by name.
• Queue - assign to a queue to be distributed among a team.
• Partner user - assign to a user of a partner account .

To assign a lead to a ‘Queue’ you’ll need to first create the Queue in the Administration > Users > Queues section of Salesforce. 

For example, you may have Queues for each region’s sales team, with the relevant users selected as members i.e. a Queue for ‘Leads - UK’ and a separate Queue for ‘Leads - Germany’. 

Once activated, all leads will be assigned based on the active rule. It’s a good idea to have a final criteria in your rule that catches all other leads and assigns them to a default user, so you can review and update your criteria if required, or manually assign these leads.

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rule example

In the above screenshot, you can see that the Lead Assignment Rule has three criteria, in order of priority. First, we eliminate leads that should not be assigned, those that are clearly time-wasters. Next, we assign ABM leads to specific sales reps because these are priority leads. Then, we assign all remaining leads to different Queues based on their region: Europe, North America, or Asia Pacific.

Triggering LARs from Pardot/Marketing Cloud

Where things get a little tricky with lead assignment is when we start to consider how leads are assigned in Salesforce when coming from Pardot or Marketing Cloud.

Pardot/Account Engagement

In Pardot, a prospect must have an assigned user to allow them to sync to Salesforce in the first place. The problem is, having an assigned user means the prospect is ignored by the Salesforce Lead Assignment Rule. 

This is all well and good if you have just one or two sales reps who handle all leads. You can simply ‘Assign to user’ or ‘Assign to Queue in Salesforce’. The complex Lead Assignment Rule might not be necessary.

For those who prefer a Lead Assignment Rule in Salesforce to better triage and automatically assign large volumes of leads to multiple users though, the solution is to select the ‘Assign Prospect Via Salesforce Active Assignment Rule’ within Completion Actions (for forms, form handlers, custom redirects, emails and page actions), Automation Rules, or Engagement Studio programs. 

This will push prospects to the Salesforce Lead Assignment Rule when the criteria is met and the prospect syncs without an owner, allowing the LAR to assign accordingly.

Marketing Cloud

How do you trigger LARs in SFMC?

With Marketing Cloud evolving from a B2C focus, lead assignment is not as well defined as a tool. That’s not to say that effective lead assignment logic can’t be used, it just means you will have to leverage the powerful tools provided by Marketing Cloud Connect in conjunction with Journey Builder.

Journey Builder has a number of actions such as the Create Lead, Convert Lead, and Update Object which can all be configured to update records in Sales Cloud. This means that you can construct a logic flow to determine which route a lead goes down and then have a create lead/update lead action that assigns the lead to a particular salesperson. This could be random, a round-robin, based on working hours, or based on a lead’s profile. 

Troubleshooting rules that aren’t working

Finding that your Lead Assignment Rules are not working? Here are a few common reasons why:

• Your LAR isn’t ‘Active’ - select the ‘Active’ checkbox and remember you can only have one active rule at a time.
• When creating leads in Salesforce manually, you must select the ‘Lead Assignment’ checkbox to ensure your new lead triggers the rule.
• Prospects are already assigned to a user in Pardot and therefore, bypass the LAR - use ‘Assign Prospect Via Salesforce Active Assignment Rule’ instead.
• You’re trying to run your LAR on a lead already assigned in Salesforce - LARs trigger for new leads as they are created and using the criteria at that time.
• There’s an error in your rule criteria which means the way you are checking the rule is wrong. Check the ‘Operator’ you are using and the way the rule is run.

Ready to qualify and assign leads?

No lead assignment in Salesforce can be relied on confidently without first agreeing on a shared definition of what a ‘sales-ready lead’ means for your business. 

Start with a robust scoring and grading model using our free ‘ Pardot Scoring & Grading That Works ’ eBook, to quickly surface only the most qualified leads and be sure you’re following the best practices for long-term success.

Founder & CEO of MarCloud, Tom has been on both sides of the fence, client-side and agency, working with Salesforce platforms for the best part of a decade. He's a Salesforce Marketing Champion and certified consultant who loves to co-host webinars and pen original guides and articles. A regular contributor to online business and marketing publications, he's passionate about marketing automation and, along with the team, is rapidly making MarCloud the go-to place for Marketing Cloud and Salesforce expertise. He unapologetically uses the terms Pardot, Account Engagement and MCAE interchangeably.

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Pardot Scoring & Grading That Works

This handbook gives a straightforward explanation of Pardot grading and scoring. It outlines default versus custom models and provides a basic understanding of lead qualification. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between grading and scoring, we cover it.

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Getting Started with Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce

Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce are a powerful tool that allow your GTM (Go-To-Market) teams to automate the process of generating leads and assigning them to the most suitable sales representatives based on specific criteria. Managing and assigning leads becomes key, particularly when dealing with high daily volumes and considering the priority of leads based on various factors. And, as we all know, speed to lead is crucial : if you waste even one minute, your conversion plummets by a shocking 391%.

Ideally, your organization should employ different lead assignment rules tailored to your go-to-market strategies and motions. For instance, the assignment rules for leads generated from a demo request on your website may differ from those for leads obtained through downloading an ebook.

A lead assignment rule consists of a prioritized set of rule entries that dictate how leads are assigned throughout your go-to-market motions, either to a specific user or to a Salesforce Queue. These rules are automatically triggered when leads are created and can also be applied to existing records.

However, there is one significant constraint with Salesforce assignment rules: only one can be active at any given time. This means that as your business scales and you implement multiple business processes, you'll need to consolidate all the complex logic into a single comprehensive assignment rule with multiple rule entries. As you can imagine, managing, maintaining, and updating such an operation can become increasingly challenging over time.

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules Examples

• Leads from Enterprise Accounts with ARR greater than $200M are assigned to Enterprise SDR Queue.
• Leads from accounts with ARR greater than $50M (and less than $200M) are assigned to Mid Market SDR Queue.
• Leads reaching Nurture Lead Status are directed to SDR 1.
• Irrelevant leads with a ‘gmail.com’ domain are routed to a dummy user and disregarded.
• Distribute leads to reps based on their respective sales territories.

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules: A step-by-step guide

Here is a step-by-step guide to help you set up Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules in keeping with your business needs and sales strategies.

Step 1: Log in to Salesforce:

Access your Salesforce account using your credentials.

Step 2: Navigate to Setup:

Click on the gear icon in the screen's upper-right corner to access the Setup menu.

Step 3: Access Lead Assignment Rules:

In the Setup menu, search for "Lead Assignment Rules" in the Quick Find box. Click on "Lead Assignment Rules" under the "Leads" section.

Step 4: Create a New Rule:

Click on the "New Lead Assignment Rule" button to create a new rule.

Step 5: Define Rule Entry Criteria:

Enter a suitable name for the rule and specify the rule's entry criteria.

You can decide whether to write a formula or build a prioritized set of rule entry criteria. The logic you define determines the conditions that need to be met for the rule to trigger.

Step 6: Specify Rule Assignments:

Choose the desired assignment method for your leads. Salesforce provides different assignment options, such as assigning leads to Queues or specific users. Select the appropriate option based on your business requirements, and (optionally) choose an email template to be sent to the new owner of the lead.

Step 7: Save and Activate the Rule:

Once you have configured all the necessary settings, click the "Save" button to save the lead assignment rule. After saving, activate the rule to make it operational.

Step 8: Test and Validate:

It is essential to test the rule and ensure that leads are being assigned as expected. Create test leads and verify their assignments based on the defined criteria. Make any necessary adjustments or refinements to the rule if required.

Salesforce editions and permissions for Lead Assignment Rules

After gaining an understanding of how lead assignment rules can benefit your business and determining their suitability, you may wonder, "Do I have the appropriate Salesforce edition?" The short answer is, “Yes.” Salesforce has now made this feature available in every edition.

In terms of user permissions, certain requirements must be met to view and edit lead assignment rules in Salesforce. Users must have the "Manage Leads" permission and the ability to "View Setup and Configuration" in order to access lead assignment rules. For editing purposes, users need the "Customize Application" permission along with either the "Modify All Data" or "Modify Leads" permission. If you are unable to locate this section in Salesforce or encounter difficulties with viewing or editing assignment rules, reach out to your Salesforce administrator to verify that you have the necessary permissions in place.

Assignment rules limits and challenges

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules, while suitable for small teams with straightforward rules, come with significant limitations that can hinder efficiency for larger teams. These limitations become more apparent as the volume of leads increases and more complex use cases arise.

One major drawback is the stringent limits imposed by Salesforce on the number of rules, entries, and actions allowed per rule. These limits are illustrated in the following table:

However, there are additional factors to consider when utilizing assignment rules in Salesforce. It is crucial to be aware of the following challenges before embarking on building your entire logic using Salesforce's native functionality:

• Limited to Leads and Cases: Assignment rules only apply to the lead and case objects. While this may suffice for simple and initial use cases, it falls short when implementing ABM (Account Based Marketing) strategy or when the need to route Opportunities arises.
• Complex QA and Audit: Salesforce's native functionality lacks versioning or debugging tools, making testing and troubleshooting assignments a laborious task. Additionally, there is no built-in record of why a lead was assigned in a particular way, further complicating the auditing process.
• Limited Assignment Options: When using assignment rules, you can only assign a Lead record to a specific user or a Salesforce Queue. Managing more intricate assignments, such as round-robin distribution, becomes challenging and costly to implement within the confines of assignment rules.
• Single Active Rule: As mentioned previously, Salesforce restricts the use of only one active lead assignment rule at a time. This means that despite having multiple processes with distinct underlying logic, you are forced to consolidate them into a single, busy rule, making management and updates cumbersome.

Considering these challenges, it becomes evident that relying solely on assignment rules may not provide the flexibility and functionality required for more complex lead management scenarios.

How Sweep Simplifies Salesforce Lead Assignment

Although assignment rules in Salesforce offer a powerful solution with a short learning curve, we recognize that the drawbacks can become a significant pain point as businesses grow and the native Salesforce tools may not fully support your team's needs.

To address these challenges, we have developed Sweep's Assignment tool, a visual no-code solution designed to simplify the implementation of assignment logic within Salesforce. This empowers organizations to build their go-to-market motions while maximizing assignment efficiency. The benefits of using Sweep's Assignment capabilities include:

• Assigning any object: From Opportunities to Accounts & Contacts and custom objects, you can apply assignment logic across various Salesforce objects.
• Achieving full visibility: Gain a comprehensive understanding of your business processes and easily track where assignments are taking place.
• Managing round-robin groups: Distribute leads equally among sales representatives using round-robin assignment to ensure fairness, or add weights to better control assignments between reps.
• Simplifying territory management and assignment: Streamline the process of managing territories and assigning leads based on specific territories.
• End-to-end lead routing capabilities: Enhance the lead routing process with advanced features such as Lead Deduplication and Lead-to-Account Matching, ensuring that leads always receive a seamless buying experience.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how Sweep Assignment can assist your business as it scales, please don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected]. I would be delighted to show you around or provide further insights into Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules.

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Table of Content:

Understanding lead assignment rules in salesforce.

Lead assignment rules play a crucial role in managing and optimizing lead distribution in Salesforce. In this article, we will delve into the intricacies of lead assignment rules, from understanding their importance to setting them up and troubleshooting common issues.

Introduction to Lead Assignment Rules

Before diving into the nitty-gritty details, let's clarify what lead assignment rules are and why they are essential. In Salesforce, lead assignment rules automate the process of assigning leads to the right sales representatives or teams, enabling efficient lead management and maximizing conversion rates.

Lead assignment rules play a crucial role in optimizing the sales process within an organization. They ensure that leads are distributed in a strategic and organized manner, taking into account various factors that can impact the success of lead conversion. By implementing effective lead assignment rules, businesses can streamline their sales workflows and increase their chances of closing deals.

What are Lead Assignment Rules?

Lead assignment rules are a set of predefined criteria that determine how leads are distributed within an organization. These rules analyze lead attributes such as geographic location, industry, or lead source, and based on these criteria, assign leads to specific users or queues in Salesforce.

For example, let's say a company operates in multiple regions and wants to assign leads based on the geographic location of the lead. They can set up lead assignment rules that automatically assign leads from specific regions to sales representatives who are familiar with those areas. This ensures that leads receive personalized attention from representatives who understand the local market dynamics and can effectively nurture the leads towards conversion.

Importance of Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce

Effective lead assignment rules are vital for streamlining sales workflows and ensuring a prompt response to leads. By automating the lead assignment process, organizations can ensure that the right sales representatives with the necessary expertise handle each lead, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Furthermore, lead assignment rules help prevent lead duplication. When leads are assigned manually, there is a higher chance of duplication, where multiple sales representatives might unknowingly reach out to the same lead. This not only creates confusion for the lead but also wastes valuable time and resources for the organization. With lead assignment rules in place, duplication can be minimized, and the sales team can focus their efforts on new leads rather than duplicating efforts on the same ones.

In addition to preventing duplication, lead assignment rules ensure fair distribution of leads among team members. By considering factors such as workload, expertise, or territory, the rules allocate leads in a balanced manner, ensuring that no sales representative is overwhelmed with an excessive number of leads while others are left with too few. This equitable distribution of leads promotes a healthy and collaborative sales environment, where team members can focus on converting leads rather than competing for them.

In conclusion, lead assignment rules are a critical component of Salesforce's lead management capabilities. By automating the lead assignment process, these rules optimize sales workflows, prevent duplication, and ensure fair distribution of leads. Implementing effective lead assignment rules can significantly enhance an organization's ability to convert leads into customers and drive business growth.

Detailed Overview of Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules

Let's take a closer look at how lead assignment rules work and the different components involved.

Lead assignment rules play a crucial role in automating the process of assigning leads to the right users or queues in Salesforce. When a new lead is created, the lead assignment rules are triggered, ensuring that each lead is handled by the most appropriate person or team.

So, how do lead assignment rules actually work? When a new lead is created in Salesforce, the lead assignment rules are triggered. These rules are evaluated based on the defined criteria, which can be customized according to your organization's specific needs. The lead is then assigned to the appropriate user or queue based on these rules.

Salesforce provides several options for evaluating lead assignment rules. One of the key considerations is the rule order. The order in which the rules are evaluated can have a significant impact on the assignment process. By setting the rule order strategically, you can ensure that the most important rules are evaluated first, increasing the efficiency and accuracy of lead assignments.

Another important aspect of lead assignment rules is the filtering criteria. These criteria allow you to define specific conditions that must be met for a rule to be triggered. By setting up filtering criteria, you can ensure that leads are assigned based on relevant factors such as geographic location, industry, or lead source.

Additionally, Salesforce offers owner-based rules, which allow you to assign leads based on the ownership of related records. For example, you can set up a rule that assigns leads to the owner of the account associated with the lead. This can be particularly useful in scenarios where leads are closely tied to existing accounts or contacts.

Components of Lead Assignment Rules

Lead assignment rules consist of three main components - rule entries, rule criteria, and assignment actions. Let's explore each of these components in more detail.

1. Rule Entries: Rule entries define the combination of criteria that triggers the rule. These criteria can be based on various fields and conditions, allowing you to create complex rules that accurately reflect your organization's lead assignment requirements. By defining multiple rule entries, you can create a hierarchy of rules, ensuring that leads are assigned based on the most specific criteria.

2. Rule Criteria: Rule criteria specify the conditions that must be met for the rule to take effect. These criteria can include both standard and custom fields, giving you the flexibility to tailor the assignment rules to your specific business needs. You can define criteria based on lead attributes such as lead source, industry, or lead score, as well as criteria related to associated records like accounts or contacts.

3. Assignment Actions: Assignment actions determine how the leads are assigned, whether to a specific user or a queue. Salesforce allows you to assign leads to individual users based on their roles, profiles, or territories. Alternatively, you can assign leads to queues, which are groups of users who share the responsibility of handling leads. By leveraging assignment actions, you can ensure that leads are distributed efficiently among your sales team, maximizing their productivity.

In summary, lead assignment rules in Salesforce provide a powerful mechanism for automating the process of assigning leads. By defining rule entries, criteria, and assignment actions, you can ensure that each lead is assigned to the most appropriate user or queue based on your organization's specific requirements. This automation not only saves time and effort but also improves the overall efficiency and effectiveness of your lead management process.

Setting Up Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce

Now that we have a better understanding of lead assignment rules, let's explore how to set them up in Salesforce.

Step-by-step Guide to Create Lead Assignment Rules

To create lead assignment rules, follow these steps:

• Navigate to the Lead Assignment Rule setup page in Salesforce.
• Click on "New Rule" and provide a name and description for the rule.
• Define the rule entries by specifying the criteria for lead assignment.
• Configure the rule criteria, such as lead attributes or field values.
• Set up the assignment actions, whether assigning to a specific user or a queue.
• Activate the lead assignment rule to make it operational.

Tips for Effective Lead Assignment Rules

Creating effective lead assignment rules requires careful consideration of your organization's sales processes and objectives. Here are some tips to optimize your lead assignment rules:

• Segment leads based on relevant criteria tailored to your business model.
• Regularly analyze and update your lead assignment rules to ensure they align with changing business needs.
• Consider implementing round-robin assignment to distribute leads evenly among team members.
• Leverage automated lead scoring to prioritize leads before assigning them.

Managing and Modifying Lead Assignment Rules

Once lead assignment rules are in place, it's important to know how to manage and modify them to adapt to evolving business requirements.

How to Edit Lead Assignment Rules

To edit existing lead assignment rules, follow these steps:

• Click on the rule you wish to modify.
• Make the necessary changes to the rule entries, criteria, or assignment actions.
• Save the changes and activate the modified rule.

Deactivating and Reactivating Lead Assignment Rules

If needed, you can deactivate a lead assignment rule temporarily. To do so:

• Locate the rule you want to deactivate.
• Disable the rule by unticking the "Active" checkbox.
• If required, reactivate the rule by ticking the "Active" checkbox again.

Troubleshooting Common Issues with Lead Assignment Rules

Despite careful setup, issues with lead assignment rules can arise. Let's explore some common errors and solutions.

Understanding Common Errors

Some common errors that may occur with lead assignment rules include leads not getting assigned, leads being assigned incorrectly, or no users being available for assignment. These errors often stem from misconfigured rule entries, criteria, or assignment actions.

Solutions for Common Lead Assignment Rule Issues

To troubleshoot lead assignment rule issues, consider the following solutions:

• Review the rule criteria and ensure they accurately reflect your desired lead assignment conditions.
• Check if there are any conflicts between different lead assignment rules.
• Verify the ownership settings for users or queues involved in the lead assignment process.
• Monitor system logs and error messages to identify any specific issues with lead assignment.

By understanding lead assignment rules and effectively leveraging them in Salesforce, you can optimize your sales processes and enhance lead management. Whether you are implementing lead assignment rules for the first time or fine-tuning existing rules, following best practices and regularly evaluating their performance will ensure efficient lead distribution and increased sales success.

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4.5 ways to do round robin assignment in Salesforce

Fairly assigning leads, accounts or opportunities to sales reps is core to how sales teams manage ownership. In most cases that means round robin assignment in Salesforce. This post outlines the (many) ways you can use Salesforce's tools to get this done.

Before you implement round robin assignment in Salesforce, think about what you're trying to achieve. Some of the options below (e.g. Lead Assignment Rules) only apply to Leads and won't work for Accounts , Opportunities , Tasks, etc. For example, if you're assigning qualified opportunities to account executives (AEs) you'll need to make sure you pick the right option.

As a refresher, using round robin to assign something in Salesforce is a lot like a dealer dealing cards. Here's how we described it in our advanced round robin post:

The dealer starts with one player, gives that player a card and then goes around the table, handing each player a card until some number of cards have been given out. This is a good way to evenly divide a large number of things (cards) among a small number of people (players). That's basic round-robin.

You should consider whether you want to do the basics or if your round robin needs weighting, capping, load balancing or availability management . Just be aware that the methods below will focus on the most basic form of round robin.

The rest of this post will cover the following methods for doing round robin assignment in Salesforce:

• Lead Assignment Rules
• Process Builder [Deprecated]
• Using sales engagement software
• Bonus method using Gradient Works 

But first, some math and an example involving a deli...

Round robin, modulo and... deli tickets?

Most of the examples below use the MOD Salesforce formula operator in some way. Mod is short for the " modulo operation " which sounds complicated but is actually pretty simple: it just gives you the remainder left over after you divide two numbers. For example:

• MOD(5,3) is 2 because 5 divided by 3 has a remainder of 2
• MOD(9,3) is 0 because 9 divided by 3 has no remainder (3 goes evenly into 9)
• MOD(2731,3) is 1 because 2731 divided by 3 has a remainder of 1 (3 goes into 2731 910 times if you're curious)

The neat part about the mod operation is that it's always a number between 0 and 1 less than the number you're dividing by. So if you take any number mod 3, the result will always be either 0, 1 or 2. Ok, maybe that could be useful... but how? Glad you asked! Let's see how we can use MOD to evenly assign something.

Imagine you run a deli and you've got 3 sandwich artists. The artists get paid $0.50 per sandwich so you want to make sure each gets an equal number of customers throughout the day or else somebody will make less money and be upset.

The good news is that every customer that walks in takes a number from the little ticket dispenser by the door. Each new customer's number is 1 more than the previous customer's number. Cool so how do you turn this system into a way of allocating customers? Glad you asked that too! Here's a little algorithm:

• Write the names of each sandwich artist on a board and give them each a number between 1 and 3.
• Take each new customer's ticket number and MOD it by 3 (the number of sandwich artists). This gives you a remainder between 0 and 2.
• Add 1 to the remainder so you have a tidy result between 1 and 3.
• Use the resulting number between 1 and 3 to pick that customer's sandwich artist from the board.

Putting it all together, let's say your new customer takes a ticket with the number 8. You do 8 mod 3 and get 2. Add 1 and you get 3. Pick sandwich artist number 3 and send them this new customer. The next customer pulls a 9. 9 mod 3 is 0. Add 1 and you've got, well, 1. Send them on to sandwich artist one. Repeat.

I don't know about you but those customers sound suspiciously like Leads (or really anything else you'd want to assign) to me. It turns out that most of the solutions below use a variation on this where the ticket dispenser machine is replaced by an auto number field .

Now if you're not too hungry for a pastrami on rye , let's actually look at our options.

1) Round robin with Lead Assignment Rules (LARs)

We've done a deep dive on Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules in another post so we won't repeat everything here. However, if you've done any googling at all for "automated round robin lead assignment in Salesforce" you've probably encountered this Salesforce Help doc about creating round robin lead assignment rules .

The basic idea in the Salesforce Help doc is precisely the deli counter example above:

• Add an auto-number field to Lead that counts up every time there's a new lead
• Add a formula field on Lead to calculate the "Round Robin Id" by MODing the Lead number by the number of sales reps and adding 1
• Hard-code Lead Assignment Rule Entries matching "Round Robin Id" to a rep

Step 3 looks like this:

Let's break down the good, the bad and the ugly of this approach.

• It's pretty simple with no complicated automation
• It's built-in so it comes with no strings attached (besides that Salesforce license $$$)
• Leads only - Lead Assignment Rules only work for - you guessed it - leads
• Hard to manage - Whenever reps get added, leave the company or just go on PTO, you have to update both the Round Robin Id formula to change the number of reps and update out the rule entries to assign Round Robin Ids to different reps
• No audit trail - However, you can help by tracking field history for the owner field.
• The minute you have any additional routing rules where some leads are created but aren't assigned to this group, your assignment gets skewed. Here's an example. Let's say 4 leads are created and given numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Let's say 2 and 3 aren't assigned because they used a Gmail address. What happens when Leads 1 and 4 get assigned? They'll both get assigned to the rep in slot 2 (MOD(1,3)+1 = 2, MOD(4,3)+1 = 2). Reps 1 and 3 aren't going to be happy about that.

2) Round robin with Process Builder

[Ed. Note: Please don't use this method since Salesforce is retiring process builder .]

Emily Douglas from Formstack discussed how to use Process Builder for round robin lead assignment at Dreamforce 2018. This solution is nice and flexible because it can be applied to any object. In fact, her example uses Contacts . Here's her overview slide:

This means that the good, bad, and ugly of this approach are pretty similar to the earlier approach.

• Built-in - You don't need anything besides Salesforce
• Any object - The pattern can work for any object, not just Leads. All you have to do is set up the custom fields on the object and set up a process builder to operate on objects of that type
• Versioning - Process builder maintains versions as you make changes so at least you can refer back to the way things used to be if you make a tweak. Just note that this doesn't apply to the formula fields, only the logic in process builder
• Duplication - This approach describes a pattern you can use for any given object with some custom fields and a process builder. You'll need to try to keep that pattern consistent across every object you build this for.
• Hard to manage - As with the LAR approach, you've got to manually edit a formula field to change the list of reps
• More workflow effort - Unlike the LAR approach, you have to explicitly build in logic in process builder to do the assignments
• Process Builder is on its way out - Salesforce has publicly stated that Flow is the future of workflow automation on the platform, not Process Builder. It's not going anywhere soon but it's not being improved.
• Skewed assignments - Just like the LAR approach, this relies on a single deli-counter style auto number field. This will skew in the exact same way if you start implementing more complex routing rules. It is possible to eliminate some of these issues in process builder, but at the expense of a lot more complexity.

3) Round robin with Apex

As you probably know, developers can build entirely custom logic on the Salesforce platform using the Apex programming language . A typical Apex solution for round robin assignment usually takes the form of one of these two approaches:

• A variation on the deli-counter approach we've discussed so far, using a combination of formula fields to compute an auto-number value, the Apex version of the modulo operation ( Math.mod ) and triggers to kick off the code. This approach has all the drawbacks of the LAR and Process Builder approach.
• A more flexible (and powerful) approach that uses a set of custom objects, each of which define "slots" in multiple round-robin queues. At the expense of a lot more complexity, this approach allows you to distribute the same type of object fairly to different groups based on any routing logic you can imagine.

A full Apex implementation is too complex to discuss here so let's just look at the good, the bad and the ugly of using Apex to do round-robin:

• Nearly-infinite flexibility - If you can describe it, you can most likely do it with Apex. Assigning any object, with any logic is entirely possible.
• Round-robin can coexist with other routing rules - It's entirely possible to build complex routing rules to different groups of users without skewing your round robin
• Version control - Modern development approaches mean you can keep track of and independently test different versions of the code.
• Developers, developers, developers - It's code. You'll need a developer to write it in the first place and you'll need a developer to maintain it, debug it and change it.
• Maintenance and change will be difficult. In my experience, most code solutions in Salesforce become very hard to maintain over time, especially when the original author leaves. Even if you do have developers to support the custom solution, they're often very busy with other priorities and can't make changes on a time schedule that the business leads.

4) Round robin with Flow

We've talked a lot about Salesforce Flow around these parts because it's the future of Salesforce automation. The important thing to know about Flow is that it provides nearly all the flexibility of Apex with the low-code approachability of Process Builder. That makes it an ideal way to build solutions like round robin assignment.

There are several good examples of using Flow for this. You can find one in the book Lightning Sales Ops by Matt Bertuzzi but I'm going to specifically focus on this one by the sales operations consultants Kicksaw .

Here's a screenshot of Kicksaw's Flow in action:

My main issue with the Kicksaw solution is that it introduces an unnecessary process builder component to trigger the execution of the Flow. That's easily done with record-triggered Flows.

• Flexibility - Flow gives you the flexibility to do most things you can do in Apex
• Maintainability - Admins can update the Flow logic and change the various user lists without needing any developer help
• Routing rules without skew - Support multiple territories and routing logic without worrying that it will skew your assignment process
• Future proof(ish) - Flow is the (current) future of automation on Salesforce
• More logic to deal with - Flow can require sorting out some tricky logic similar to programming; not all admins are comfortable with that
• A lot to configure - The full Kicksaw solution requires some custom objects, a queue and even some Lead Assignment Rules in addition to Flow. That can be a lot.
• It's all on you - In the end, this solution is custom to your Salesforce and relies on you and your team to maintain it.

4.5) Round robin with Sales Engagement software

I'm throwing in a "4.5" here because these recommendations aren't strictly Salesforce but instead might give you the ability to do basic round robin assignment with tools you already have. Sales engagement tools like Outreach and Salesloft have some basic round robin capabilities backed in so you may be able to get away with using them.

• You're already paying for it
• Functionality is super limited and generally only applies to a few use cases
• If you get rid of your sales engagement product, you'll also lose any round robin functionality you're using

Bonus! Round robin with Gradient Works

You didn't think I was going to let you get out of here without talking about how Gradient Works makes round robin assignment in Salesforce easy , did you?

If you're looking for a no-code round robin assignment solution that's flexible enough to handle whatever routing rules you throw at and advanced enough to optimize any of the assignments in your customer lifecycle, check us out .

Happy assigning!

By the way, round robin is such an important part of how sales teams manage assignments and handoffs, that we put together a whole round robin assignment knowledge base for sales teams . Go check it out. 

Hayes Davis

Hayes Davis is co-founder of Gradient Works. Previously, Hayes was SVP of Revenue Operations at Cision, where he ran a global team of 50 supporting nearly 600 sellers. He was also co-founder and CEO of Union Metrics until its successful acquisition by TrendKite in 2018. Hayes has a background in computer science.

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Q-assign is an advanced Salesforce-native app designed to automate work-assignment systems for cases, leads, opportunities, work orders, and more, using intelligent rules.

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Any team using Salesforce for managing leads, cases, opportunities, work orders, or other custom objects can benefit from the intelligent assignment capabilities of Q-assign.

Key features include dynamic assignment rules, availability-based routing, account matching, automated reassignment, omni-channel routing, attribute-based routing, territory management, and AI-powered actions.

Yes, Q-assign offers customizable, code-free dynamic assignment rules that can be tailored to meet the unique requirements of different business units.

By ensuring tasks are assigned to the most suitable Salesforce user based on expertise, availability, and workload, Q-assign increases efficiency, effectiveness, and performance.

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Assignment rules in Salesforce

• By Ankush Dureja in salesforce

December 6, 2018

Page Contents

What are assignment rules in salesforce ?

Assignment rules in salesforce are used to automatically assign lead or Case to owner( User Or Queue ). Assignment rule is used to automate owner assignment on Case and Lead based on conditions on Case or Lead. For example, there could on lead assignment rule for web-generated leads and one case assignment rule for the holiday use.

Types of assignment rules

There are two type of assignment rules

Lead Assignment Rules

Case assignment rules.

Specify how leads are assigned to users or queues as they are created manually, captured from the web, or imported via the Data Import Wizard.

Determine how cases are assigned to users or put into queues as they are created manually, using Web-to-Case, Email-to-Case, On-Demand Email-to-Case, the Self-Service portal, the Customer Portal, Outlook, or Lotus Notes.

Create or Setup assignment rules

• From Setup, enter Assignment Rules in the  Quick Find  box, then select either  Lead Assignment Rules  or  Case Assignment Rules .
• Choose  New , and then give the rule a name. Specify whether you want this to be the active rule for leads or cases created manually and via the web and email. Then click  Save .
• To create the rule entries, click  New . For each entry, you can specify:
• Order : Sets the order in which the entry will be processed in the rule, for example, 1, 2, 3. Salesforce evaluates each entry in order and tries to match the criteria of the entry. As soon as a match is found, Salesforce processes the item and stops evaluating the rule entries for that item. If no match is found, the item is reassigned to either the default Web-to-Lead owner, the administrator doing a lead import, or the default case owner.
• Choose criteria are met and select the filter criteria that a record must meet to trigger the rule.For example, set a case filter to Priority equals High if you want case records with the Priority field marked High to trigger the rule. If your organization uses multiple languages, enter filter values in your organization’s default language. You can add up to 25 filter criteria, of up to 255 characters each. When you use picklists to specify filter criteria, the selected values are stored in the organization’s default language. If you edit or clone existing filter criteria, first set the Default Language on the Company Information page to the same language that was used to set the original filter criteria. Otherwise, the filter criteria may not be evaluated as expected.
• Choose formula evaluates to true and enter a formula that returns a value of “True” or “False.” Salesforce triggers the rule if the formula returns “True.” For example, the formula AND(ISCHANGED( Priority ), ISPICKVAL (Priority, “High”) ) triggers a rule that changes the owner of a case when the Priority field is changed to High. If your condition uses a custom field, the rule entry will be deleted automatically if the custom field is deleted.
• User : Specifies the user or queue to which the lead or case will be assigned if it matches the condition. Users specified here cannot be marked “inactive” and they must have “Read” permission on leads or cases.
• Do Not Reassign Owner : Specifies that the current owner on a lead or case will not be reassigned to the lead or case when it is updated.
• Email Template : We can specifies the template to use for the email that is automatically sent to the new owner. If no template is specified, no email will be sent. When assigning a lead or case to a queue, the notification goes to the Queue Email address specified for the queue and all queue members.
• Predefined Case Teams : Specifies the predefined case team(s) to add to a case when it matches the condition. A case team is a group of people that work together to solve cases.
• Replace any existing predefined case teams on the case : Specifies that any existing predefined case teams on the case are replaced with the predefined case teams on the condition, when a case matches the condition.

After creating the entry, click  Save , or  Save & New  to save the entry and create more entries.

Assignment Rule Example

Following is sample Case assignment rule which assigns case to different queues based on Billing Country, Account SLA and customer type:

For more details about assignment rules please refer to assignment rules  official link.

Assignment rules in Salesforce trailhead

Good luck for creating Assignment rules in Salesforce 🙂

• Assignment rules , Assignment rules Salesforce , Case Assignment rules , Lead Assignment Rules , salesforce , sfdc

Ankush Dureja

Permanent link to this article: https://www.sfdcpoint.com/salesforce/assignment-rules-in-salesforce/

Skip to comment form

• Stremove.com on August 2, 2020 at 9:10 am

Case Assignment Rules Determine how cases are assigned to users or put into queues as they are created manually, using Web-to-Case, Email-to-Case, On-Demand Email-to-Case, the Self-Service portal, the Customer Portal, Outlook, or Lotus Notes.

• Dayene on August 25, 2020 at 7:01 pm

Hi! What about when I want my assignment to change when the Lead status is changed? I’ve created two criterias. First when the status is new and second when the status has other values. But when the Lead is updated and the status changes the assignment doesn´t follow this change and it does not assignment the Lead Owner correctly. Thanks.

• Vrushabh LEngade on October 27, 2020 at 3:51 pm

Use Escalation Rules and escalate the case to another user or queue

• subhasini on December 23, 2021 at 6:19 pm

Hi Ankush Dureja, there is a interview question on assignment and the question is : What will happen if the user becomes inactive(or user is deactivated) on whom the rule is assigned. Please reply me ASAP

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Lead assignment guide: salesforce and round robin.

Assigning new accounts, leads , and other various tasks to sales representatives is the foundation of managing a fair business. With Salesforce , this usually involves round robin assignment. 

In this guide, we explore how to use Salesforce tools to implement a basic form of round robin assignment:

• Lead Assignment Rules (LARs)
• Process Builder
• Sales engagement software
• Syncari for round robin in Salesforce

But before you get started, think about your goals. How many leads do you have? How big is your sales team? How many leads can your team realistically accomplish in a short time?

Before we get into the ins and outs of conducting round robin in Salesforce, let’s discuss what round robin assignment is. 

[Related: How to create a lead scoring model ]

What is round robin?

Round robin assignment is synonymous with round robin distribution. It works by assigning specific items to two or more people in order. That last part is important. 

Similar to a card game, the dealer (e.g., a person who assigns leads) gives a card (e.g., a lead) to a player. The dealer continues on assigning cards to the rest of the players (e.g., the team of sales reps). 

This method is great for evenly assigning a high number of “things” to a group of people. The key is that the number of things assigned is greater than the total number of people receiving assignments.

When it comes to distribution for RevOps teams, “cards” are leads, accounts, tasks, or opportunities. And because there are always new leads, the “card game” never really ends. There are always new leads, and controlling when new leads become available is out of your hands. 

This makes lead distribution an ongoing cycle.

[Related: Salesforce deduplication and beyond: How to dedupe leads across your stack ]

Tools for round robin lead assignment are on the rise

If you search for “round robin lead assignment” you’ll be surprised how many of these tools are on the market. That’s because it’s not difficult for any tool that is a form builder or CRM widget to theoretically develop a logical cycle function to push leads to different sales reps. 

Part of the reason this is more important today than several years ago is the rise of companies relying on inbound leads, particularly free trials, to fuel sales teams’ efforts. 

The Product-Led Growth movement often refers to free trial signups that are then activated with consultative sales teams. This go-to-market model needs effective lead routing and assignment. 

Take Dooly for example, which has a huge free trial motion. It’s easy to sign up for the tool for free, and easy to see value quickly. But then Dooly needs to route these leads to sales representatives. Getting them alerts and notifications about signups and usage was too difficult to do, given the product data sat in Bigquery, and Hightouch was taking 8 months to set up.

Learn how Dooly was up and running with PLG lead management in three weeks with Syncari.

Beyond lead assignment: full lifecycle lead and contact management

It’s important to think past handing the lead to sales, to the full lifecycle of lead and contact management.

• Is it accurately attached to an account, if one exists already?
• What happens when it converts to an opportunity? 
• If the opportunity closes, how will Salesforce hand off to the billing/ERP tool?
• If the opportunity closes, how will success and support teams get the full information in their tools?

And if you could do all this with one tool , wouldn’t you want that instead of five?

But for now, let’s focus on common lead routing logic, and the various tools that support it.

Round robin and the modulo (MOD) operation

Using the MOD Salesforce formula operator is essentially dividing two numbers (the bigger by the smaller) and then ending up with a remainder (whatever is left over). 

For example, MOD(9,7) is 2 because 9 divided by 7 has a remainder of 2. Or in other words, 7 goes into 9 only once, and the number left over is 2. 

Another example, MOD(8,2) is 0 because 8 divided by 2 has no remainder (2 goes into 8 evenly, exactly 4 times). 

Whenever you use the MOD operation, you’ll always end up with a remainder of 0, 1, or 2. But what if you want to make sure each of your five Salesforce reps receives an equal number of new leads? Follow these steps:

• Record the names of each sales rep and assign them a number between 1 and 5.
• Take each new lead number (let’s say there are 12) and MOD it by 5. This gives you a remainder of 2. 
• Add 1 every time there’s a new lead to get a result between 1 and 5 (in this case, 2 + 1 = 3). 
• Use the resulting number between 1 and 5 (3, as stated above) to pick which sales rep gets the new lead. 

Because each new incoming lead is one higher than the next, adding one to your remainder allows you to pick a new sales rep each time a new lead comes in. 

1) Using Lead Assignment Rules (LARs) with round robin

Follow these steps to create round robin LARs in Salesforce : 

• Add an auto-number field to Lead. This counts every time there’s a new lead. 
• Add a formula field on Lead. This calculates a round robin ID. Your lead number is the MOD of the number of sales reps. Once you calculate a remainder, you add 1 to it.
• Hard-code LARs entries. The round robin ID is matched to a designated sales rep. 

Using this method in Salesforce for round robin is simple, automated, and built-in (although you still need a Salesforce license). But this method works for leads only. It’s also slightly difficult to manage because you have to update the round robin ID formula whenever new sales reps need to be added; permanently removed; or temporarily removed when someone takes PTO, maternity leave, or something else.

Moreover, when you add routing rules where leads are created but unassigned to a sales rep, your assignments become skewed. Sometimes reps have varying email addresses, so either they get skipped or possibly assigned twice when you assign a lead.

2) Round robin with Process Builder

Using Process Builder for round robin assignment is a flexible solution because you can apply it to any object (e.g., lead, task, hours, contact, account, opportunity). 

The main difference between using Process Builder and LARs is that the last step is more flexible because it isn’t specifically tied to a lead. 

However, the good sides are that it’s built-in, and you can assign more than just leads to sales reps based on the custom field you set. You can also change past versions you built. So if you need to make small tweaks, you can do so in Process Builder. 

But there are a few downsides, one of which is duplication. You’ll have to try to keep your assignment pattern consistent across every object you use round robin for. For example, this isn’t ideal if the pattern needs to be different for leads vs. contacts.

Another downside is that you have to manually edit the formula field when you want to change your list of reps, whether it be who the rep is or the number of reps. 

Additionally, Process Builder is slightly outdated. It’ll remain available for use but isn’t being improved. Salesforce actually announced that Flow is the future , which we’ll discuss a bit later. 

3) Round robin with Apex

Using the Apex programming language on the Salesforce platform, developers can build a custom logic. Round robin assignment using the Apex solution follows one of these approaches: 

• Using a combination of formula fields to compute an auto-number value. The Apex version of the modulo operation ( Math.mod ) sparks a mode that uses a combination of varying formula fields. This combination computes an auto-number value. 
• Using a set of custom objects that define “slots” in several round robin queues. While this approach is more complex, it allows you to fairly distribute the same type of object (let’s say a lead) to different groups based on any preferred routing.

Apex allows flexibility with round robin because you can assign any object with any logic. Your round robin can also coexist with other routing rules. For example, you can build routing rules to different user groups (or sales reps) without skewing the round robin. 

Additionally, you can test different versions of the round robin code and keep track of how they perform. 

The problem with Salesforce Apex for round robin

Using Apex for round robin typically requires a developer to write the code and maintain it. If this developer leaves, or has to hand off to a new team, this becomes difficult to maintain. Plus, Salesforce code solutions are typically difficult to support over time (especially if the original developer is no longer with your company). 

4) Round robin with Flow

Using Salesforce Flow provides nearly the same amount of flexibility that Apex does, as well as less code (as with Process Builder).

You can use Flow with a more complex routing logic because you can use it with separate groups of reps with different territories. It also automatically assigns a lead (or other object) to the rep who’s gone the longest without one. 

And admins can update Flow logic and change user lists without help from developers (a major plus). 

The problem with Salesforce Flow for round robin

Flow requires some custom objects to support it, and even some lead assignment rules in addition to the flow. Some admins might be uncomfortable with this. Additionally, because Flow is a custom solution, your team must maintain it. 

5) Round robin with sales engagement software

You can also do round robin assignments with tools you already own, such as Outreach , Salesloft , or something else. They have basic, built-in round robin capabilities, so you can carry out round robin using those platforms. 

However, the functionality is limited, and many operations leaders prefer to centralize their lead assignment rather than have multiple systems each perform round robin on their own. Additionally, if you no longer have your sales engagement product, you could lose any round robin assignment functions you had. 

[Related: A simple guide to lead routing for marketing and sales teams ]

Using Syncari for Round Robin Lead Assignment

Syncari, a RevOps automation platform, can assist your round robin assignments in Salesforce . You can set up a flow for all new leads regardless of source – enrichment, demo requests, etc. And then centrally assign leads to your sales team via round robin or based on your business logic, whether segmentation by size or industry, territory or job function.

The biggest advantages to Salesforce round robin lead assignment in Syncari are the no-code, drag-and-drop builder, and the customizations you can make to the logic. You can also optimize your assignments based on the customer life cycle. 

If you’re interested in using Syncari for round robin in Salesforce, you can start a free 30-day trial , or request a custom demo .

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• Salesforce Admin

Salesforce Lead Assignment rules

• Dec 28, 2023

Salesforce Lead Assignment rules automate your org lead generation and support processes. Lead Assignment Rules are a powerful tool that enables the automatic assignment of leads to the right sales representatives based on specific criteria.

What is Salesforce Lead Assignment rules?

Lead assignment rules are used to specify how leads are assigned to users or queues. This is used to assign the owner of leads based on lead generation, like leads created from the web or imported from a data loader.

Type of Assignment Rule 

There are two types of assignment rules we have in Salesforce.

• Lead Assignment Rules
• Case Assignment Rule

How to create lead Assignment Rules

Let’s see the step-by-step guide to set up the lead assignment rules.

• Creating Lead Assignment Rule
• Creating Lead Assignment Criteria
• Specify the lead assignment method
• Activate the lead assignment rules
• Test the lead assignment rules

Consideration for Lead Assignment Rules

• We can create as many assignment rules as possible, but only one can be active.

Lead Assignment Rules can help streamline your lead management process, improve lead conversion rates, and increase sales productivity by ensuring that the right leads are assigned to the right representatives.

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• Lead Assignment Rules in Salesforce

What You’ll Learn

What are lead assignment rules, example scenario.

• How to Create Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules?

Benefits of Lead Assignment Rules

• What is Sales Cloud in Salesforce?
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• Salesforce Lead and Lead Processes
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• Opportunities in Salesforce
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Effective lead management in Salesforce’s changing environment is essential for boosting sales. They are automated processes within Salesforce that determine how newly created leads are assigned to users or queues. Lead assignment rules in Salesforce are essential for making sure that leads are managed and dispersed in your company correctly.

This technical blog will walk readers through the nuances of Salesforce’s lead assignment rules, look at actual cases, and comprehend the significant advantages they provide.

Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules are used to automatically assign lead records to a particular user or queue based on different conditions. It can contain many rule entries that determine the assignee of a lead. Rule entry specifies the following:

• Sort Order, which determines the order of evaluation of rule entries.
• Entry criteria determine which rule entry the response will be sent through.
• Name of the user/queue to which the record should be assigned.
• An email template will be used to send the response.

We can create as many assignment rules as we want, but only one can be active at a time. “Don’t Reassign Owner” determines if the user whose process stack is in use becomes the owner of the rule entity or if it remains owned by its creator user.

Source-Based Assignment –  Leads originating from the company’s website forms are assigned to the inside sales team. These leads are automatically directed to the relevant representatives based on the web form source, ensuring a quick response.

Territory-Based Assignment –  For leads generated from trade shows, assignment rules are configured to assign them to the field sales representatives responsible for the respective geographic territories. This ensures that local representatives handle leads effectively.

Round-Robin Assignment –  Marketing campaigns yield a large volume of leads. To distribute these leads equitably, the organization uses round-robin assignment rules. Leads are systematically rotated among the sales representatives, ensuring a fair distribution of opportunities.

How to Create Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules? 

Creating lead and case assignment rules in Salesforce is a relatively straightforward process. 

Step 1: After logging in, go to the horizontal navigation bar’s upper right corner and choose Setup.

Step 2: Type “assignment rules” into the Setup search box, then choose Lead Assignment Rules.

Step 3: To add a new assignment rule, select New.

Step 4 : Enter a name in the Rule Name box and Click Save when finished.

Step 5: To specify your rule criteria, click open your newly generated rule and choose New in the Rule Entries.

Here, the “Enter the rule entry” window requires you to enter an Order for your new rule (the Order is the order in which the entry is processed, like a queue).

Next, you need to determine whether your new rule is based on meeting a set of criteria or a formula. In the “Run this rule if the” dropdown box, select either “criteria are met” or “formula evaluates to true.”

Lastly, select the user or queue to whom your rule will assign your new lead (use the lookup feature to find specific users or a queue)

Step 6: After completing these steps, select Save.

Implementing lead assignment rules in Salesforce provides several key benefits:

• Leads are automatically routed to the most suitable representatives or teams, reducing manual assignment efforts.
• It is used to assign the owner to a lead record, which is stored from Web-to-Lead. But while creating lead records manually, the ‘Assign using active assignment rule’ option is visible, which lets the owner be assigned as per the criteria defined in the assignment rule. The owner will be the creator of the record.
• With source-based rules, organizations can ensure that leads are promptly attended to, resulting in faster response times and increased lead-to-opportunity conversion rates.
• Territory-based rules allow organizations to align leads with representatives who have in-depth knowledge of specific regions, increasing the chances of successful conversions.
• Round-robin assignment rules prevent the overload of leads on a single representative and ensure that all sales team members have an equitable opportunity to engage with potential customers.
• Automation reduces the likelihood of manual errors in lead assignment, ensuring that no lead is overlooked.

Lead assignment rules in Salesforce are potent tools for optimizing lead management. Whether it’s routing leads by their source, assigning them to the proper territory, or equitably distributing them among your sales team, these rules streamline the process and enhance efficiency.

By understanding the principles of lead assignment rules and harnessing their capabilities, organizations can ensure that no lead goes unattended, resulting in increased conversion rates and driving sales success.

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Create leads in Salesforce through REST API. How to assign assignmentruleHeader and emailHeader?

I am trying to add leads in salesforce through rest API.Code is in java. I have converted WSDL to jar files and added as reference in Eclipse which allow to access salesforce objects in java. PFB my code.

I want to add assignmentruleheader and emailHeader but i'm not getting which object to associate these headers with? When im trying to add assignmentruleheader i cant add it as Java doesnt allow this object through package reference rather it has assignmentruleheader_element object. Similar thing for emailheader as well i have only object EmailHeader_element.

• assignment-rules

• These attributes need to be set on the request. What is your HttpPost, is it from Apache httpclient? –  Jayant Das Commented Aug 27, 2018 at 17:32

By definition, Assignment Rule Header states:

The Assignment Rule header is a request header applied when creating or updating Accounts, Cases, or Leads.

The field name and the value to be set on this header is provided in the documentation as below.

Field name Sforce-Auto-Assign Field values TRUE. Active assignment rules are applied for created or updated Accounts, Cases, or Leads. FALSE. Active assignment rules are not applied for created or updated Accounts, Cases, or Leads. Valid AssignmentRule ID. The given AssignmentRule is applied for created Accounts, Cases, or Leads.

So if you have a request object as post (I am not really sure which library you are using here), then you would like to set the assignment rule header as below:

post.addHeader("Sforce-Auto-Assign”, “[the assignment id]");

Looking at the documentation of REST headers, I don't see anything available for Email Header, its available only on SOAP but not on REST.

• Thank you Jayant i got it working with below line. post.addHeader("Sforce-Auto-Assign","01Q28000000e0Ow"); Is there any way to add email header similary? –  Priya Commented Aug 28, 2018 at 6:32
• I haven’t come across email headers with REST API. –  Jayant Das Commented Aug 28, 2018 at 11:30

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‎Dec 20, 2017 6:29 PM

Solved! Go to Solution.

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‎Dec 21, 2017 12:52 PM

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‎Feb 22, 2018 2:53 PM - edited ‎Feb 22, 2018 2:53 PM

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