How Territory Geographies are Grouped
This topic describes how we can overcome the problem of territory geography splits by grouping them into group zones.
You do a territory geography grouping when any of your territory geography levels has multiple splits. A territory geography splits occur when the lower level master geographies are added to territory geography hierarchy, while skipping the higher level master geographies. This may cause multiple occurrences of the lower geography level members in a territory geography hierarchy.
For example, postal code split happens when a postal code overlaps across many master geography levels such as cities and counties. Suppose that the business firm Vision Corp. delivers its product according to the postal codes. If counties and cities aren't included in the territory geography hierarchy of Vision Corp., then the end user can see the multiple occurrences of the postal code 97229.
When there is a territory geography level split, and if you want to group the split geographies, first you must specify the master geography level for which you want the grouping to be performed, then initiate grouping. When grouping is performed, all the splits of the selected master geography level get grouped under a new group zone. In the previous example, if you select postal code in the master geographies as the level for grouping and initiate the grouping process, then the 12 postal code splits for the postal code 97229 gets grouped together under one group zone named 97229. So, the Territory Manager user can define territories on a clean list of postal codes or their ranges, although some of those postal codes would in fact be the groupings of the postal code splits. The grouped splits are hidden for the Territory Manager user.