Overview of Geography Setup

You must import and set up reference geography data for the countries where you do business. You can use this data to set up validation for address elements, such as states and cities, to prevent address data entry errors.

Oracle licenses geography data from Loqate that you can import, at no additional cost. You can also license geography data from another supplier. For more information about importing third party geography data, see the Import Country Structure and Import Geographies topics of the Understanding Import and Export Management for Sales and Fusion Service.

Alternatively, you can verify your address data using Oracle Address, Email, and Phone Verification. This service lets you verify that an address is an actual postal address as well as cleanse the address to conform to postal requirements. However, note that you require a separate license for Oracle Address, Email, and Phone Verification.

Vision Corp., the organization in our case study, imports and sets up reference geography data from Loqate for the countries it's available. For the rest of countries where it does business, it uses Oracle Address, Email, and Phone Verification to prevent address data entry errors.

This table lists the tasks you must complete to set up geography data.

Step	Description	Task Name	Where to Get More Details
Set Up Geography Structure	You can define geography types and then define how the geography types are hierarchically related within the country structure.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Set Up Geography Structure
Set Up Geography Hierarchy	After defining the geography structure, you can add geographies for each geography type in the geography hierarchy.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Set Up Geography Hierarchy
Set up Geography Validation	For the countries for which you imported geography data, enable validation down to address level required for your business, such as sales territories, and specify which address elements require lists of values. When you enable validation on an address element, the application suggests alternatives during address entry. Enabling a list of values requires the user to make a selection from a list. Both validation and lists of values are enforced in the UIs.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Setting Up Geography Validation
Import Geography Data	Import Oracle-licensed geography data for the countries you do business from Loqate. Search for the country for which you want to import geography data on the Manage Geographies page and select the Import Geography Data action. The Import Geography Data action is disabled if Loqate doesn't support the country; or Oracle-licensed geography data or any third-party geography data is already imported for the country; or geography data and hierarchy data is already manually created for the country.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Import Geography Reference Data Licensed by Oracle
Import Geography Zone Data	You can define zones that are specific to your business needs. For example, San Jose Tax zone or West Coast shipping zone.	Import Management	See the topic: Import Your Geography Zone Data
Import Territories	You can replicate your sales organization's regions by defining territory geography zones.	Manage Territory Geographies	See the topic: How You Import and Export Territory Geography Zones
Turn on Validation for Address Import	The validation selection you make on the Manage Geographies page affects entries made in the application UI only. You must use the task Manage Administrator Profile Values to set the profile option Geography Address Validation Enabled to Yes to validate the addresses you import. You must also make sure that the address data you import matches what the geography reference data expects. In case of data mismatch, add an alternate geography data in the Manage Geographies UI. For example, for the Aosta province in Italy, third-party geography data has a value of AOSTA and Loqate has a value of TR. To resolve this conflict, in case you imported the data from third-party earlier, add AO as an alternate province name in the Manage Geographies UI.	Manage Administrator Profile Values	See the topic: Turn on Validation for Address Import
Set up Geocoding	You can use the Geocoding feature to find the latitude and longitude coordinates of the locations where your business is operating.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Set Up Geocoding
Enable Address Mapping	Enable the mapping of account and contact addresses. With mapping enabled, your salespeople on the go can view their contacts on a map and obtain directions on their mobile phones with the click of a button.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Enable Address Mapping Using Geocoding
Turn on Real Time Address Cleansing	Enable real time address cleansing to validate and correct geography attributes and the address line attributes as you enter address information in the application. Note: To use the address cleansing functionality, a separate license for Oracle Address, Email, and Phone Verification is required.	Manage Geographies	See the topic: Enable Real Time Address Cleansing