Siebel Territory Management Guide > Setting Up and Running Territory Alignments >

About Conditions in Territory Management

If you use indirect rules, you can also use conditions to limit the pool of objects (accounts, contacts, and assets) that are available for assignment by indirect rules. Table 6 describes the types of conditions.

This section presents some important points and some examples of how conditions can be used in Territory Management. Because conditions cannot be explicitly grouped, the conditions that you can create for territory alignments are somewhat limited, and you need to understand these limitations in order to use conditions effectively.

What Is Scope?

For global conditions, a scope is a set of conditions for the same object type. For local conditions, a scope is a set of conditions for a given object type, territory, postal code, and geo code combination. Figure 2 shows five scopes, some global and some local.

Figure 2. Global and Local Scopes

Condition Evaluation Within a Given Scope

One important difference between conditions in Territory Management and ordinary Boolean conditions is that, for a given scope, you must:

• Place all the OR conditions first or
• Place all the AND conditions first.

You cannot put OR conditions between AND conditions or vice versa. See Figure 3.

These grouped conditions are evaluated as follows:

• A condition that includes only ANDs is evaluated in the usual way. The entire condition is true only if all the subconditions are true.
• A condition that includes only ORs is evaluated in the usual way. The entire condition is true if any one of the subconditions is true.
• A condition where the ANDs precede the ORs is evaluated as if it were grouped in the following way: 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4 OR 5 OR 6 is evaluated as 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND (4 OR 5 OR 6).
• A condition where the ORs precede the ANDs is evaluated as if it were grouped in the following way: 1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4 AND 5 AND 6 is evaluated as (1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4) AND 5 AND 6.

Figure 3. Within a Scope, Group Like Conditions Together (ANDs with ANDs; ORs with ORs)

Condition Evaluation Between Scopes

The AND operator is always automatically applied between global and local conditions. All subconditions must evaluate as true for the entire condition to be true. You cannot use the AND and OR operators between scopes, only within the same scope.

Local conditions for different scopes are handled separately. For example, consider the condition:

A AND B AND c AND d OR e

where A and B are global conditions, c is a local condition, and d and e are also local conditions but in a different scope from c.

It is evaluated as:

[(A AND B) AND c] OR [(A AND B) AND (d OR e)]

About Using Dates as Attributes for Conditions

Without configuration, the application has three condition attributes for dates:

• Last Call Date (for TM_Contact)
• Installed Date (for TM_Asset)
• Purchase Date (for TM_Asset)

If you create conditions using any of these attributes, you need to be aware of the following:

• When you enter a value for a date attribute, enter the date only, for example, 06/08/05. Do not include the time.
• Assignment Manager interprets this date as midnight in the server's time zone, for example, 06/08/05 12:00:00 AM.
• Using the equals (=) operator with date attributes is not recommended. Use greater than or less than operators (<,<=,>,>=) or combine two conditions to specify a range.

About Using Divisions as Attributes of Conditions

To define alignments with different business rules that apply to different sales forces, use the Divisions field of the Conditions list applet. This allows you to create conditions that apply to one sales force, since divisions represent sales forces.

NOTE:  You cannot combine division conditions with other types of conditions in a single condition record. For example, you cannot specify Division = Primary Care AND Territory = XYZ in a single condition.

About Renumbering and Inserting Conditions

To allow you to insert conditions in the list, if you change the sequence number of a condition, the application automatically renumbers all conditions that follow. This allows you to insert new conditions in the sequence by renumbering only one condition.

For example, you have defined ten global conditions for contacts, with sequence numbers from 1 to 10. You change the sequence number of the seventh condition from 7 to 15. The application changes 8 to 16, 9 to 17, and 10 to 18. This allows you to insert new conditions with sequence numbers between 7 and 14.

When you renumber conditions, the application checks that no overlap occurs. In this example, if there were already a condition with sequence number 17, this existing number would overlap with the new sequence numbers that are created automatically. The system displays an error message so you cannot make this change until you have corrected the condition that causes the overlap.

About Copying Conditions from Another Alignment

Conditions are not incremental. You must define the entire set of conditions for each alignment.

You can click the Copy From Alignment button in the Alignment Administration screen, Conditions view to copy conditions from a previous alignment. Then you can use them as the basis of the conditions for a new alignment and modify them as needed for the new alignment.

When you click this button, it displays a dialog box that allows you to choose among conditions that have been created for the same territory hierarchy.

NOTE:  When you copy conditions from a multi-division alignment into a single-division alignment, do not copy division local conditions in this way.

CAUTION:  When you copy conditions in this way, they overwrite any existing records in the Conditions list.