Building an account assignment rule requires Enterprise Territory Management enabled, a territory model in Planning state, and a clear set of criteria for which accounts belong in the territory.
- Enable Enterprise Territory Management
Setup, Territory Settings, Enable Enterprise Territory Management. The feature is on by default in new orgs created after 2017, but older orgs may need to flip the switch. The enable is one-way.
- Create or open a Territory Model
Setup, Territory Models, New. Give the model a name and Planning state. Models in Planning do not affect sharing. Activation is the irreversible step that pushes the model live.
- Build the territory hierarchy
Inside the model, add territories as parent and child nodes: North America, then USA, then East Region, then Northeast. Five levels is the platform maximum. Each territory has a name, label, and territory type.
- Add an account assignment rule
Open the territory, Assignment Rules tab, New. Give the rule a name, set Active = true, add criteria (BillingCountry = USA, Industry = Manufacturing), and optionally check Apply to Child Territories.
- Run rules on the territory
From the territory page, click Run Rules. The platform evaluates the rules against all accounts and creates ObjectTerritory2Association rows for matches. For new models, run rules at the model level instead.
- Activate the model
Once the rules are stable and the assignments look correct, Activate the model. This is the step that turns on Territory-based Sharing across the org. Plan a maintenance window for any model with more than 50,000 accounts.
Toggle on the rule itself. Inactive rules do not evaluate even when their parent model is active. Use this for staged rollouts.
When checked, the rule cascades to every territory under this one. Useful for region-level criteria that apply to all sub-territories.
Up to 10 field-operator-value triples. Default AND logic, with optional custom Boolean expression for OR combinations.
String like (1 AND 2) OR 3 that overrides the default AND logic on the criteria. Validate carefully - parser errors silently make the rule never match.
Planning, Active, or Archived. Only Active models drive sharing. Planning models hold the proposed structure without affecting the live org.
- Running rules on a model with 100,000+ accounts takes hours and runs asynchronously. Plan for the wait and watch the progress through the Territory Model status page.
- Manual account assignments override rule matches. A previously hand-assigned account does not get reassigned even when its rule no longer matches. Run the Manual Assignment report periodically.
- Inherited rules cascade to every child territory. A region-level rule with broad criteria can over-assign accounts unintentionally. Test rules in Planning state before activating the model.
- Territory-based sharing is automatic. Adding a user to a territory grants access to every account in that territory. There is no per-account override at the user level.
- The legacy Customizable Territory Management (CTM) module is not the same as ETM. Migrating from CTM to ETM is a one-way conversion with manual rule rewrites.