Territory Management enabled, account assignment working, opportunity assignment not working at all!

[Will Sitch]

Hi everyone:

We've just enabled territory management on our production database after playing with it a little in our sandbox, and the introduction was pretty painless - with one big caveat!

I built a territory hierarchy based on continental coverage - Worldwide sales (top), with North America, South America, Asia, Europe, etc, below, with some sub-regions (US East Coast, US West Coast, with California broken out North/South inside the US West Coast region).  I've got a good set of rules working and the accounts are all assigned exactly as they should be.  I've always paid close attention to data validity, ie: 95% of accounts had good addresses already, so the rules were easy to implement.

However I'm having a real bitch getting opportunities to fall into territories!  The thousands of opps we have now appear to be randomly distributed - some are correctly assigned to territories, others aren't.  Furthermore, new opps aren't assigned to any territory, they get a blank value given to them on creation.

It seems as if some auto-assign rule didn't get run, or some trigger isn't tied into the 'create new opp' function.  I've read and re-read the rules about opportunity assignments, but Salesforce just isn't acting as the documentation indicates it should be.

This sucks!  Has anyone fought with this before?  Got any tips?

Thanks,

Will

[rpr2]

Opportunities that you create are automatically assigned a territory when you meet both of the following conditions:

• You belong to or have edit privileges on the same territory as the account on the opportunity.
• You have no other territories in common with that account.

You haven't mentioned how users are assigned to territories.  That would be the place that I would start looking to see why opportunities aren't getting assigned.  Also, I would start by troubleshooting the newly created opportunities first, and then once that is figured out go back to the ones that were created prior to you turning on terrmitory management.

If you are displaying the territory information on your account page layout, you will be able to see whether or not your accounts are being assigned to multiple territories.  There is also a territory report you can run to determine this.  If you do have accounts that are in multiple territories, and the users are also in multiple territories in common with the account, then the oportunity will not be automatically assigned to a territory.

Rhonda

[Will Sitch]

Okay, after thinking about it all last night, I figured out my problem and just got it working.

I was defining regions as buckets (ie: US was anything with country=usa), and I had buckets inside other buckets (ie: US West Coast was anything with states=CA,OR,...).  Unfortunately, as Rhonda suspected, this was giving my accounts more than one territory!

An account in San Francisco was in: Worldwide Sales, North America, US West Coast, and Northern California territories.  The opportunities weren't being assigned to any of those regions, 'cause SF didn't know which region I wanted the opp in!

So I redefined all my buckets to be exclusive.  Worldwide Sales has accounts that AREN'T in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, etc.  North America has accounts that are in US, Canada, Mexico, etc, but that aren't in any of the US states.  US West Coast has accounts that are in the US and in the states CA, OR, etc, but AREN'T in Zip Codes 93600-96599.  Northern California has accounts that are in the US, in CA, and in zip codes 93600-96599.

Will

[GitaK01]

Hi, I have a similar situation where i have set up a bunch of assignment rules. The accounts get assigned, but the opportunities don't auto assign to a territory.

When I go to review the territories where my opportunity can get placed, I see a picklist which included values for where the account auto assigned plus every territory above it in the territory hierarchy.

THere is only one user in the territory, so I don't understand why the opportunity is not automatically assigning to that one territory associated with the user. Like I said, the opportuntiy has an option of associating to the user territory plus all territories above in the territory hierarchy.

[rpr2]

If the opportunity is showing multiple territories, and if the user also has access to those multiple territories, than the system will not know which one to select and so the selection will need to be manual.

If you can re-design your account assignment rules so that the account gets assigned to just one territory, then the auto-assignment for the opportunities should start to work for you.

Rhonda

[Will Sitch]

Hi Gita:

I had the same problem you appear to be having, and it was only after very careful reading of the territory management assignment rules did I figure it out.  In my case, the problem was that accounts belonged to more than one territory and users were in more than one territory.

If you're saying that your accounts are in multiple territories, but your users are only in one, then I think that user's opportunities should be assigned to the one territory the user is a member in.  To double-check who is a member in what territory, click the territory sharing group link under Setup -> Manage Territories -> Hierarchy -> [territory name].

I have another problem now, and it's driving me nuts again.

We have a bunch of regional sales managers (RSMs) who are territory managers and five inside sales associates (ISAs) who support them. Each RSM has one territory, the ISAs work in all territories.

Our open sharing model allows both the RSM and some/all of the ISAs to own opportunities in a particular territory, but the RSM is responsible for the region. We want to view the forecast as being really 'rolled up' - as salesforce advertises everywhere - but there are problems.

There are 3 use cases as follows:

1. If the RSM is set to territory manager and the RSM owns all opportunities in the territory, then everything works fine.  Forecasts are only listed for the RSM, and it's easy to see what sales are occuring in each territory.

2. If an ISA creates a new opportunity within a territory, and the ISA is _not_ an active member in a territory, then the opp is created with no territory listed. The ISA doesn't have permissions to change the opportunity territory value either. I can't figure out how to get the ISAs permissions within each territory without assigning them explicitly to the territory (I've tried sharing rules, roles, profiles, teams, and groups with no success).

Furthermore, when I go along behind the ISAs and assign unassigned opps to a territory (leaving the opp ownership with the ISA), then the ISA is added to the territory as an inactive member. This adds the ISAs name to the territory forecast list (see below), which is what I want to avoid.

3. If I add ISAs to each territory as active members, then when they create a new opportunity in whatever territory it is correctly assigned. This seems to be the right way to go!

However, the ISAs name is added to the forecast in each territory! For example: "Northern California (RSM name), Northern California (ISA1 name), Northern California (ISA2 name), Northern California (ISA3 name) ....".  When I look at the forecast for Northern California I see six different forecasts - one for the RSM and five ISA forecasts.

This is no roll-up, and gives me no clear view of the expected sales for the territory!

Got any ideas?  I proposed a solution here: http://ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/10090973/Make_customizable_forecasts_with_territory_managem...

Will 

[GitaK01]

Rhonda & Will you are offically awesome for being so responsive...especially on a Sunday!

Okay, I think your answers are helping me determine that this is a user issue. So the user is only in one territory, but the account owner is in multiple. (Right now it is me!) Does that mean the opportunity territory despite being owned by a user in one territory will allow for the opportunity to reflect in any territory that I am in (I guess as sys admin I'm in all?). Becasue I did what Will did and saw the rep was only in one territory, his account got assigned to his territory, but since i loaded the account, I am the owner of the account. if I change the account owner to me and re-run the rules, should all bode well?

[rpr2]

If you're going to Dreamforce, and want to learn more about Territory Management, vote for this session:

http://dreamforce.ideas.salesforce.com/article/show/10089132