Setting Up a Lead Assignment Rule

You must be an Insightly administrator to create a new rule.

Lead assignment rules automate the process of assigning leads as they are added to Insightly, making it easier on sales managers and teams to distribute leads evenly or according to specific criteria. You can choose to assign leads in a number of different ways, including:

• Geographic area, by selecting fields like Postal Code, State/Province, or City.
• Number of employees, by selecting the Employee Count field.
• Your own custom fields that you've set up in Insightly.
• Round robin, by selecting a team or multiple individuals to receive leads on a rotating basis.

You can use almost any lead field to set up a rule, and you can choose from many different matching criteria. When a lead assignment rule is applicable, both the lead owner and the responsible user get assigned.

Creating a lead assignment rule

1. Click the profile icon, and navigate to the System Settings > Lead Assignment Rules page.
   
2. Click the Add Rule button.
   
3. Enter a name for the rule that summarizes the criteria you'll be entering. In this example, we're assigning leads according to the state or province in their mailing addresses, so we're calling it "Assign by Region."
   
4. Select which methods of entry the rule will apply to. These are the ways your leads are being entered into the CRM. Your options are:
   • API - When leads are created automatically from sources outside of Insightly through our API.
   • Web to Lead form - When leads are added from an Insightly-generated webform that you place on your website.
   • Manually Added Leads - Leads entered by one of your users through their web browser or Insightly mobile app. This also includes copied leads, or contacts that are changed to leads.
   • Select more than one of the above - You can apply the same rule to more than one entry method.
   • Select none of the above - You can create rules that won't be applied to any of the entry methods above, but can be selected when you import leads.
     While you can create more than one lead assignment rule, only one can be active for a particular entry method. In other words, you can set up a rule that applies to leads created from the Web to Lead form and are manually entered. But if you create another rule for manually-entered leads, the first rule you created will no longer apply to that entry type.
5. Click the Save Rule button.
   
6. The criteria section will now appear for your rule. This is where you tell Insightly which data to look for and whom to assign the matching leads to. To enter your first set of criteria, click the Add Criteria button.
   
7. Select the field and an operator, then enter a value for the leads you want to match to. For each new filter, click the Add Filter Row link and select the AND or OR operator. Use AND to narrow the number of leads that will match, and use OR to broaden the list of matches with either the preceding value or the next value.
   
   In this example, we're creating a set of criteria for a region of western U.S. states. We'll filter our leads by State/Province fields that are equal to CA OR NV OR AZ.
   
   
8. When your criteria filters use both AND and OR Boolean operators, you'll need to organize them using the Filter Logic field to correctly match the leads. If you're not mixing AND and OR operators, skip this step.
   
9. Select a team, a user, or multiple users. When a team or more than one user is selected, Insightly will assign the leads in a "round robin" fashion. That means the system will rotate the assignments through the group of users alphabetically by first name.
   
   For example, for a three-person team: Lead #1 goes to user Adam Smith, Lead #2 to David Hume, and Lead #3 to Thomas Reid, then Lead #4 will go to Adam Smith and start the cycle again, evenly distributing the leads as they are added.
   
10. Click the Save Criteria button.
11. The rule will be updated and saved with your new criteria. Click the Add Criteria button to add your next set of criteria following steps 6 through 10. Continuing our example, we could add other regions for states in New England and the Southeast U.S.
12. Click the bar to the left of an item to reorder the criteria, if necessary. Each entry will be executed sequentially, so if a new lead matches the first set of criteria, it will be assigned and the process will end. If it doesn't match the first, Insightly will check the second, then the third, etc. Place the criteria in an order that considers that logic.
    It's a good idea to have the last set of criteria be broad enough to catch leads that will slip through all the other rules. For the regional example, we might have a criteria that says "if State/Province is empty, assign to the sales manager."
    
13. Click the Save Rule button to save your changes.
    
14. Now that your rule is set up, enter a test lead through each of the methods you've selected. If the lead isn't assigned properly, adjust your rules and criteria as necessary. (Don't forget to delete your test leads when you've finished testing.)

Testing the process will also help you catch criteria that may have been overlooked. This can be a bit of a logic puzzle at first, but you'll get the hang of it!