Geography Structures

The first step for defining a country is to create a geography structure in which geography types are part of the country structure, and then define how the geography types are hierarchically related within the country structure. For example, you can create geography types called State, City, and Postal Code. Then you can rank the State geography type as the highest level within the country, the City as the second level, and the Postal Code as the lowest level within the country structure. Geography structure can be defined using the Manage Geographies task, or can be imported using tasks in the Define Geographies activity.

Note: During import of geography data from any provider if one or more geography levels aren’t available, n/a is substituted for those geography levels. For example, the list of values in the address UIs of accounts, contacts, suppliers, persons, and so on are displayed as n/a for such geography levels.

A geography structure is a hierarchical grouping of geography types for a country. The following table describes the geography structure for the United States.

Level	Geography Type
1	State
2	County
3	City
4	Postal Code

You can use the geography structure to relate geography types for a country and define geography types for a country.

Relate Geography Types for a Country

You can determine how a country's geographies are hierarchically related by creating the hierarchy of the geography types in the geography structure. When you define a country's structure, the geography type Country is implicitly at the highest level of the geography structure with level as 1. The subsequent geography types that you add after country are numbered in sequence.

You must add a geography type as a level in the country structure before you can define a geography for that geography type in a country. For example, before defining the state of California, the State geography type must be added to the United States country structure. To quickly create country structure, you can copy a structure from another country and modify the geography types for the country.

Define Geography Types for a Country

You can use any of the master reference geography types to create your geography structure. If required, you can create a geography type, before adding it to the country structure. Each geography type is added at a lower level to the current lowest level.

Note: You can't delete geography types that have associated geography data. You can only delete the lowest level geography type of the country structure.

You can use a geography type that you create within the country structure for other country structures as well.