Automatic Lead Assignment

I keep coming across more features that are getting enabled as part of 2021 Release Wave 1 and each time another feature is added I feel like I received another birthday present! Microsoft is not sitting still and new features are being added almost constantly! I think this feature is going to be a game changer for a lot of sales organizations. Keep in mind this feature is currently in public preview, which means it’s not a finished product as of yet. You have the ability to test it out and see how it works and provide feedback to Microsoft. As the title suggests, as part of this feature a lead distribution engine will be added to the Dynamics 365 organization. You can then configure the logic for leads to be automatically assigned to users or teams based on assignment rules. Keep in mind that this feature is part of the Sales Accelerator in Dynamics 365 Sales, which means you’ll need to purchase the Sales Insights add-on license in order to get access to this functionality. To learn more about the Sales Accelerator check out these two articles I wrote about it: What’s new with the Sales Accelerator and Sales Accelerator(Preview).

How does it work?

So first let’s talk about how this auto-assignment actually works. When a lead flows into the system the assignment rules that were configured are applied to the leads. If the condition(s) in the assignment rule is met, the lead is automatically assigned to a Dynamics 365 Sales user or team.
Keep in mind that if there are multiple rules. The the system always looks at the order of the rules, the rule that is on top will be ran first, then the one beneath that one, and so on. So when you are creating new rules, these new rules will automatically be added to the top of the list, but if you need to you can move the rules’ order around so that the most important rules are ran first.

Seller Attributes

The assignment rules work hand in hand with seller attributes that are part of the lead assignment functionality as well. We can use these attributes to track certain things on a per user basis, for example certain skills different users have, like the ability to speak another language besides English. Another example is there maybe certain types of leads that should only be sent to certain sales people.
Seller Attributes allow us to create attributes and associate them with Dynamics 365 users (the sellers). We can use some of the fields that are related to the lead table for this (option sets) or we can create our own attributes with their corresponding values. Let’s create a new seller attribute to track which languages our users are speaking. In the Sales Hub, navigate to Sales Insights settings and click on ‘Assignment Rules(preview)’ on the sitemap. You’ll notice ‘Seller attributes’ on the bottom right side of the screen. Click on ‘Manage’ then click the ‘+New seller attribute’ button. In the window that pops up, enter a name for the seller attribute, which in my case is ‘Language’ or ‘Languages Spoken’. Below the seller attribute you’ll notice an dropdown field that reads ‘Data field linked to attribute’. These are fields that I mentioned earlier which are related to the lead table. If there was an out of the box ‘Preferred language’ field for leads (which would represent the language the lead prefers), you would be able to choose that here, and you would even be able to remove any of the values from that field in the seller attribute! So for example if I had the languages ‘German’, ‘Spanish’ and ‘English’ in the ‘Preferred Langage’ option set field, but only needed to use ‘Spanish’ and ‘English’, I could remove the ‘German’ option from the seller attribute.

Since the ‘Preferred Language’ field doesn’t exist as part of the lead table, there are two different options you have: you can select ‘Do not link with fields’ (This allows you to add your own values to the attribute by typing the values in the ‘Attribute Values’ field and hitting enter on your keyboard) or you can manually create the ‘Preferred Language’ field for the lead table and using that. Honestly I would suggest trying both just to you understand what I’m talking about and get to learn more about this functionality.

Managing Sales Teams

You can access the sales users or sellers by clicking on the ‘Manage button’ on the Sales Teams section on the Assignment rules page. This will take you to a page that shows all the sellers and their related information, like ‘Max capacity’ (see explanation below), ‘Current leads assigned’ (if there are leads assigned to sellers prior to creating assignment rules, the total number of assigned leads will not show in this list immediately. Once a lead gets assigned, a leads’ status is updated or a lead is deleted, this number of currently assigned leads will be updated). Seller attributes that are assigned to each seller, whether or not a seller should be part of the users that gets leads assigned by the assignment rules (Assign Leads slider) and a list of ‘Roles’. If you want certain sellers to be excluded from getting leads assigned you can turn this off on a per user basis. Unfortunately there is currently no way to mass update sellers, you’ll have to turn them off one by one. Roles represent the security roles that are assigned to the user.

Applying Seller Attributes

Once you have created the seller attributes you will still need to add them to the different sellers. You can start this process by clicking on the ‘Manage’ button on the Sales Team section on the Assignment Rules page. Keep in mind these seller attributes can only be assigned to users, not to teams. In order to assign the seller attributes to Dynamics 365 users in bulk, check the box next to the seller names, then click ‘Apply Attributes’ and select the attributes you want to assign. Another button on the top is the ‘Set Lead Capacity’ button. This will allow you to set how many leads any seller could have assigned as a maximum. This is important because this works hand in hand with the assignment rules. If (based on the rule) a lead is to ready to get assigned Tom, and Tom’s lead capacity is 10 but he already has 10 leads assigned to him the lead will not be assigned to him. The lead capacity can also be updated for multiple users at a time.

Assignment Rules

The assignment rules is where we configure the data (which leads should be assigned) and the logic of the lead assignment. (when does a lead needs to get assigned?) You’ll notice ‘Assignment rules’ on top of the screen. This is where you will be creating the assignment rules. Click ‘+New Assignment Rule’ to start creating a new rule.
You will need to enter the name of the rule and select a lead segment. NOTE: Once the rule is activated, all of the leads in the segment will be assigned based on the logic in the rule. If you want this rule to apply to all leads you can leave the ‘Set lead segment’ field blank. If you’ve read my previous article about the sales accelerator and how segments work, then you know that we can filter out leads in a segment.

When you select a segment in the assignment rule, you can add additional filters to the assignment rule by clicking ‘+ Additional Condition’. This will take you to a query screen where you can configure the filters you want to use for this specific rule. You have the ability to filter on lead columns but you can also add filters for tables that are related to the lead, just like we can in advanced find. For this particular example I added a field/column to the lead table called ‘Preferred Language’ with the values “English’, ‘Dutch’ and ‘Spanish’ so I can track which language the lead prefers to speak. Under the assignment rule I am adding an additional lead condition where the ‘Preferred Language’ equals ‘English’. This means that all leads in the segment that I tied to to this rule that have this field set to ‘English’ will be included to be assigned.

In the ‘Assign these leads to‘ field we can define who to assign the leads to. These could be individual users or to owning teams. (Make sure the teams/users have the correct privileges otherwise the leads won’t be assigned to the user/team.) If you choose to assign the leads to users, you’ll notice you can assign the leads to ‘Sellers with matching attributes’. These refer to the seller attributes that I discussed earlier. This option also allows us to add filters for those seller attributes. In this example we only want to assign the leads to sellers who speak English, so I choose the ‘User seller attributes defined for assignment rules’ option, and then picked ‘Language’ (<-this is the seller attribute) equals ‘English’. This means that these leads will only be assigned to sellers/users that have the ‘English’ language seller attribute.

Under the ‘Distribute leads by’ section you have the option to choose load balancing or round robin assignment. Load balancing means that the leads will be distributed based on a users’ current load. Example: According to the rule a lead would need to be assigned to sellers/users who speak English. Let’s say there are two users, Bob and Scott who both speak English. Scott has a current load of 10 leads and Bob has a load of 5 leads currently assigned to him. This means the lead would be assigned to Bob, because his load is less than Scott’s. Round robin assignment is where the leads get distributed evenly. Let’s say we have 4 leads that need to be distributed, then both Bob and Scott will get 2 leads assigned regardless of how many leads they own.
Below the ‘Load balancing’ and ‘Round robin’ assignment options you see the ability to consider a seller’s capacity. As mentioned before, a seller’s capacity is the maximum number of leads that can be assigned to the seller. If this box is checked, a seller’s capacity will be taken into account.

You’ll also notice a check box named ‘Consider seller availability’. If you check this box, then the seller’s calendar will be taken into consideration. Example: If a seller has marked days off on their calendar the lead won’t get assigned to that seller on those days even if that seller meets all other conditions. The system would try to assign the lead to another seller who meets the conditions in the rule or the lead would remain unassigned (if no other seller meets the condition(s)).
In order for a seller to set their availability they would need to configure this. Before they can do this, the setting needs to be enabled first. You’ll need to navigate to ‘Sequences’, where you will see a ‘Settings’ button on the top right of the page (image above). The seller availability settings can be turned on here. Once this is turned on, each seller can configure their own individual availability by navigating to the Sales area in the Sales Hub and then selecting ‘Sales Accelerator’ on the sitemap on the left hand side. On the top of the work items lists you’ll notice a gear icon. This is where some of the personal settings can be configured. When clicking the gear icon the ‘Personal Settings’ window will pop up where users can configure their availability. To learn more about setting up sellers’ availability click here.
One last thing I wanted to mention is that this engine runs each time a lead is created or updated, so it’s not like it runs in batches every couple of hours.

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