lead assignment round robin salesforce

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Create a Round Robin Lead Assignment Rule

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Keep your team's workload even by auto-assigning new leads to each user.

Round robin assignment means that each new lead is assigned to a different user until everyone has been assigned the same amount and the cycle repeats.

For example, if you have three users:

• Lead 1 is assigned to user 1
• Lead 2 is assigned to user 2
• Lead 3 is assigned to user 3, then the cycle repeats
• Lead 4 is assigned to user 1
• Lead 5 is assigned to user 2
• Lead 6 is assigned to user 3, then the cycle repeats.

You can set up round robin lead assignment with a few custom fields and a lead assignment rule

Create a Lead Number f+Field to Give Each New Lead a Unique ID.

• Open Setup.
• Search for Object Manager , and open it.
• Click Lead .
• Click Fields & Relationships .
• Click New .
• Select Autonumber , and click Next .
• Name your field Lead Number .
• In Display Format, enter {0} .
• In Starting Format, enter 1 .
• Check the box to Set this field as the unique record identifier from an external system , and click Next .

• Uncheck all Page Layout boxes, and click Save & New .

Create a Round Robin Field That Tells the System to Assign Each New Lead to the Next User in Order.

• Select Formula , and click Next .
• Name your field. For example: Round Robin .
• Select Number .
• In the Decimal Places dropdown, choose 0 , and click Next .
• Select Advanced Formula .

• Click Next .
• Give user permission to the right people, and click Next .
• Uncheck all Page Layout boxes, and click Save .

Create a Lead Assignment Rule to Ensure Leads are Assigned Evenly Across Users

• In Setup, search for Lead Assignment Rules , and open it.
• Name your rule Round Robin Assignment Rule , and click Save .
• Click to open Round Robin Assignment Rule.
• In the Rule Entries section, click New .
• In Sort Order, enter 1 .
• Set the rule criteria by choosing Round Robin in the Field dropdown, Equals in the Operator dropdown, and 1 in the Value field.
• Select the user this rule applies to.
• Optionally, select an email template to tell the user that the rule has been assigned to them.

Allow Round Robin Lead Assignment on Manually-Created Leads.

• In Setup, click Object Manager .
• Click Page Layouts .
• Open Lead Layout .
• Click Layout Properties .
• Next to Lead Assignment Checkbox, check the box to Show on edit page , and click Okay .
• Save your changes.

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4.5 ways to do round robin assignment in Salesforce

Fairly assigning leads, accounts or opportunities to sales reps is core to how sales teams manage ownership. In most cases that means round robin assignment in Salesforce. This post outlines the (many) ways you can use Salesforce's tools to get this done.

Before you implement round robin assignment in Salesforce, think about what you're trying to achieve. Some of the options below (e.g. Lead Assignment Rules) only apply to Leads and won't work for Accounts , Opportunities , Tasks, etc. For example, if you're assigning qualified opportunities to account executives (AEs) you'll need to make sure you pick the right option.

As a refresher, using round robin to assign something in Salesforce is a lot like a dealer dealing cards. Here's how we described it in our advanced round robin post:

The dealer starts with one player, gives that player a card and then goes around the table, handing each player a card until some number of cards have been given out. This is a good way to evenly divide a large number of things (cards) among a small number of people (players). That's basic round-robin.

You should consider whether you want to do the basics or if your round robin needs weighting, capping, load balancing or availability management . Just be aware that the methods below will focus on the most basic form of round robin.

The rest of this post will cover the following methods for doing round robin assignment in Salesforce:

• Lead Assignment Rules
• Process Builder [Deprecated]
• Using sales engagement software
• Bonus method using Gradient Works 

But first, some math and an example involving a deli...

Round robin, modulo and... deli tickets?

Most of the examples below use the MOD Salesforce formula operator in some way. Mod is short for the " modulo operation " which sounds complicated but is actually pretty simple: it just gives you the remainder left over after you divide two numbers. For example:

• MOD(5,3) is 2 because 5 divided by 3 has a remainder of 2
• MOD(9,3) is 0 because 9 divided by 3 has no remainder (3 goes evenly into 9)
• MOD(2731,3) is 1 because 2731 divided by 3 has a remainder of 1 (3 goes into 2731 910 times if you're curious)

The neat part about the mod operation is that it's always a number between 0 and 1 less than the number you're dividing by. So if you take any number mod 3, the result will always be either 0, 1 or 2. Ok, maybe that could be useful... but how? Glad you asked! Let's see how we can use MOD to evenly assign something.

Imagine you run a deli and you've got 3 sandwich artists. The artists get paid $0.50 per sandwich so you want to make sure each gets an equal number of customers throughout the day or else somebody will make less money and be upset.

The good news is that every customer that walks in takes a number from the little ticket dispenser by the door. Each new customer's number is 1 more than the previous customer's number. Cool so how do you turn this system into a way of allocating customers? Glad you asked that too! Here's a little algorithm:

• Write the names of each sandwich artist on a board and give them each a number between 1 and 3.
• Take each new customer's ticket number and MOD it by 3 (the number of sandwich artists). This gives you a remainder between 0 and 2.
• Add 1 to the remainder so you have a tidy result between 1 and 3.
• Use the resulting number between 1 and 3 to pick that customer's sandwich artist from the board.

Putting it all together, let's say your new customer takes a ticket with the number 8. You do 8 mod 3 and get 2. Add 1 and you get 3. Pick sandwich artist number 3 and send them this new customer. The next customer pulls a 9. 9 mod 3 is 0. Add 1 and you've got, well, 1. Send them on to sandwich artist one. Repeat.

I don't know about you but those customers sound suspiciously like Leads (or really anything else you'd want to assign) to me. It turns out that most of the solutions below use a variation on this where the ticket dispenser machine is replaced by an auto number field .

Now if you're not too hungry for a pastrami on rye , let's actually look at our options.

1) Round robin with Lead Assignment Rules (LARs)

We've done a deep dive on Salesforce Lead Assignment Rules in another post so we won't repeat everything here. However, if you've done any googling at all for "automated round robin lead assignment in Salesforce" you've probably encountered this Salesforce Help doc about creating round robin lead assignment rules .

The basic idea in the Salesforce Help doc is precisely the deli counter example above:

• Add an auto-number field to Lead that counts up every time there's a new lead
• Add a formula field on Lead to calculate the "Round Robin Id" by MODing the Lead number by the number of sales reps and adding 1
• Hard-code Lead Assignment Rule Entries matching "Round Robin Id" to a rep

Step 3 looks like this:

Let's break down the good, the bad and the ugly of this approach.

• It's pretty simple with no complicated automation
• It's built-in so it comes with no strings attached (besides that Salesforce license $$$)
• Leads only - Lead Assignment Rules only work for - you guessed it - leads
• Hard to manage - Whenever reps get added, leave the company or just go on PTO, you have to update both the Round Robin Id formula to change the number of reps and update out the rule entries to assign Round Robin Ids to different reps
• No audit trail - However, you can help by tracking field history for the owner field.
• The minute you have any additional routing rules where some leads are created but aren't assigned to this group, your assignment gets skewed. Here's an example. Let's say 4 leads are created and given numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. Let's say 2 and 3 aren't assigned because they used a Gmail address. What happens when Leads 1 and 4 get assigned? They'll both get assigned to the rep in slot 2 (MOD(1,3)+1 = 2, MOD(4,3)+1 = 2). Reps 1 and 3 aren't going to be happy about that.

2) Round robin with Process Builder

[Ed. Note: Please don't use this method since Salesforce is retiring process builder .]

Emily Douglas from Formstack discussed how to use Process Builder for round robin lead assignment at Dreamforce 2018. This solution is nice and flexible because it can be applied to any object. In fact, her example uses Contacts . Here's her overview slide:

This means that the good, bad, and ugly of this approach are pretty similar to the earlier approach.

• Built-in - You don't need anything besides Salesforce
• Any object - The pattern can work for any object, not just Leads. All you have to do is set up the custom fields on the object and set up a process builder to operate on objects of that type
• Versioning - Process builder maintains versions as you make changes so at least you can refer back to the way things used to be if you make a tweak. Just note that this doesn't apply to the formula fields, only the logic in process builder
• Duplication - This approach describes a pattern you can use for any given object with some custom fields and a process builder. You'll need to try to keep that pattern consistent across every object you build this for.
• Hard to manage - As with the LAR approach, you've got to manually edit a formula field to change the list of reps
• More workflow effort - Unlike the LAR approach, you have to explicitly build in logic in process builder to do the assignments
• Process Builder is on its way out - Salesforce has publicly stated that Flow is the future of workflow automation on the platform, not Process Builder. It's not going anywhere soon but it's not being improved.
• Skewed assignments - Just like the LAR approach, this relies on a single deli-counter style auto number field. This will skew in the exact same way if you start implementing more complex routing rules. It is possible to eliminate some of these issues in process builder, but at the expense of a lot more complexity.

3) Round robin with Apex

As you probably know, developers can build entirely custom logic on the Salesforce platform using the Apex programming language . A typical Apex solution for round robin assignment usually takes the form of one of these two approaches:

• A variation on the deli-counter approach we've discussed so far, using a combination of formula fields to compute an auto-number value, the Apex version of the modulo operation ( Math.mod ) and triggers to kick off the code. This approach has all the drawbacks of the LAR and Process Builder approach.
• A more flexible (and powerful) approach that uses a set of custom objects, each of which define "slots" in multiple round-robin queues. At the expense of a lot more complexity, this approach allows you to distribute the same type of object fairly to different groups based on any routing logic you can imagine.

A full Apex implementation is too complex to discuss here so let's just look at the good, the bad and the ugly of using Apex to do round-robin:

• Nearly-infinite flexibility - If you can describe it, you can most likely do it with Apex. Assigning any object, with any logic is entirely possible.
• Round-robin can coexist with other routing rules - It's entirely possible to build complex routing rules to different groups of users without skewing your round robin
• Version control - Modern development approaches mean you can keep track of and independently test different versions of the code.
• Developers, developers, developers - It's code. You'll need a developer to write it in the first place and you'll need a developer to maintain it, debug it and change it.
• Maintenance and change will be difficult. In my experience, most code solutions in Salesforce become very hard to maintain over time, especially when the original author leaves. Even if you do have developers to support the custom solution, they're often very busy with other priorities and can't make changes on a time schedule that the business leads.

4) Round robin with Flow

We've talked a lot about Salesforce Flow around these parts because it's the future of Salesforce automation. The important thing to know about Flow is that it provides nearly all the flexibility of Apex with the low-code approachability of Process Builder. That makes it an ideal way to build solutions like round robin assignment.

There are several good examples of using Flow for this. You can find one in the book Lightning Sales Ops by Matt Bertuzzi but I'm going to specifically focus on this one by the sales operations consultants Kicksaw .

Here's a screenshot of Kicksaw's Flow in action:

My main issue with the Kicksaw solution is that it introduces an unnecessary process builder component to trigger the execution of the Flow. That's easily done with record-triggered Flows.

• Flexibility - Flow gives you the flexibility to do most things you can do in Apex
• Maintainability - Admins can update the Flow logic and change the various user lists without needing any developer help
• Routing rules without skew - Support multiple territories and routing logic without worrying that it will skew your assignment process
• Future proof(ish) - Flow is the (current) future of automation on Salesforce
• More logic to deal with - Flow can require sorting out some tricky logic similar to programming; not all admins are comfortable with that
• A lot to configure - The full Kicksaw solution requires some custom objects, a queue and even some Lead Assignment Rules in addition to Flow. That can be a lot.
• It's all on you - In the end, this solution is custom to your Salesforce and relies on you and your team to maintain it.

4.5) Round robin with Sales Engagement software

I'm throwing in a "4.5" here because these recommendations aren't strictly Salesforce but instead might give you the ability to do basic round robin assignment with tools you already have. Sales engagement tools like Outreach and Salesloft have some basic round robin capabilities backed in so you may be able to get away with using them.

• You're already paying for it
• Functionality is super limited and generally only applies to a few use cases
• If you get rid of your sales engagement product, you'll also lose any round robin functionality you're using

Bonus! Round robin with Gradient Works

You didn't think I was going to let you get out of here without talking about how Gradient Works makes round robin assignment in Salesforce easy , did you?

If you're looking for a no-code round robin assignment solution that's flexible enough to handle whatever routing rules you throw at and advanced enough to optimize any of the assignments in your customer lifecycle, check us out .

Happy assigning!

By the way, round robin is such an important part of how sales teams manage assignments and handoffs, that we put together a whole round robin assignment knowledge base for sales teams . Go check it out. 

Hayes Davis

Hayes Davis is co-founder of Gradient Works. Previously, Hayes was SVP of Revenue Operations at Cision, where he ran a global team of 50 supporting nearly 600 sellers. He was also co-founder and CEO of Union Metrics until its successful acquisition by TrendKite in 2018. Hayes has a background in computer science.

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Salesforce Round Robin Lead and Case Assignment

Excel as a Salesforce Administrator

Imagine your leads or cases as a deck of cards. Now you want to distribute the deck evenly among five players on the table - the players being agents or sales reps in your company. What you do is deal one card at a time to player 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5, then back to player 1 and so on, until all the cards are dealt.   A similar system or algorithm of assigning leads or cases can be done inside Salesforce, and this method is aptly called the "round robin". 

“Round robin is an arrangement of choosing all elements in a group equally in some rational order, usually from the top to the bottom of a list and then starting again at the top of the list and so on.” Simply put, round robin is all about taking turns on who gets a card. So while distributing cards, each participant is given one card at a time, in a rotational manner.

Round Robin as Applied in Salesforce

A very common requirement from many Salesforce customers is to be able to distribute leads or cases amongst the sales or support teams in a rotational manner. So if there are three sales reps in the company and we would like to distribute leads, then:

• Lead 1 must go to Sales Rep 1 (Start of turn 1)
• Lead 2 must go to Sales Rep 2
• Lead 3 must go to Sales Rep 3 (End of turn 1)
• Lead 4 must go to Sales Rep 1 (Start of turn 2)
• Lead 5 must go to Sales Rep 2
• Lead 6 must go to Sales Rep 3 (End of turn 2)
• ….and so on

This requires using lead or case assignment, which is a standard feature, but if we would like to do round robin assignment, we need to do some configuration to make it work.

The following example is for leads, but it works the same way for cases.

What we need:

• Two custom fields (One Formula field and one Auto number field)
• One Lead assignment rule

  Create two Custom fields

To create a new field go to: Setup->Object Manager->Lead->Fields & Relationships

1- Set Auto Number Field (Lead Number)

When you set this, the field will be populated with an auto-generated sequential number whenever a new lead is created.

Using the wizard, select Auto Number and click NEXT.

In Step 2 of the wizard, you will see the following properties:

Fill them in accordingly:

2 - Fill in formula (Round Robin ID)

You may now configure the formula field by choosing Formula Field here, and clicking NEXT.

In Step 2 of the wizard, focus on the following properties (marked in red):

Fill in the values accordingly:

In Step 3 of the wizard, fill in the Formula:

In our example we have 3 sales reps, so the formula is: MOD(VALUE({!Lead_Number__c}) ,3) +1

What the formula does is divide the the Lead Number by (Number of Sales Reps) and find the remainder of the division. MOD() function is used for the purpose. This returned remainder ‘R’ will be as per the below equation Number of sales reps-1 >= R >= 0 We then add one to the remainder, so the equation becomes : Number of sales reps-1+1 >= R=1 >= 0+1 i.e. Number of sales reps >= R+1 >= 1 So the number returned by formula (R+1) will always be one from the set {1,2,3,4,…,Number Of Sales Rep} This returned value will be stored in the Formula field ‘Round Robin ID’. So if we have 5 sales Reps the formula will be MOD(VALUE({!Lead_Number__c}) ,5) +1. And the Round Robin IDs generated will be 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. If the sales reps are given numbering starting from 1, then the corresponding ‘Round Robin Id’ can be used to assign the leads to the sales reps. In our case we have 3 sales reps, which we name Sales Rep 1, Sales Rep 2, Sales Rep 3. Round Robin Ids generated will be either 1 or 2 or 3.

The screenshot below was captured after six leads were created.

 Create Lead Assignment Rule

Now that the stage is all set, we can leverage the ‘Round Robin Id’ to create lead assignment rules to assign leads to the Sales Reps. To do this:

Go To Setup->App Setup->Customize->Leads->Lead Assignment Rules

Click the New Button

Enter a name for the Assignment Rule e.g. ‘Round Robin Assignment Rule’

Save the Assignment Rule.

Click the New Button in the Rules Entries section to create a new rule entry

Set the Sort Order: 1

Select the Fields Field: Lead: Lead Number Operator: equals Value: 1

Select the User to be assigned the Lead

Optionally select an email template to notify the new owner they have just been assigned a Lead. There is an “out of the box” email template called “Leads: New assignment notification (SAMPLE)” that comes with Salesforce that is usually stored in the “Unfiled Public Email Templates” folder.

Repeat the steps to create rule entries for Reps 2 and 3.

When you successfully configure this for all your reps, you should be well on your way to enjoying the benefits of the Salesforce Round Robin method.

Some Helpful Notes

Purpose of 'sort order'.

The Rules entries are evaluated based on sort order in ascending order.  If the first rule entry (Sort order = 1) criteria is not satisfied then the second rule entry (Sort Order = 2) is evaluated and so on… As soon as a rule entry criteria is satisfied, then the lead owner is assigned based on the rule and the remaining rule entries are not evaluated for the lead under consideration. Ensure that Lead Assignment check box is made visible on edit page layout.

To configure this:

• Go to Setup>Object Manager>Lead>Page Layouts
• Click on edit against the concerned page layout
• Click on Page Layout Properties
• Check the check box ‘Lead Assignment Checkbox – Show On edit Page’

Lead Assignment Check box is now added on lead edit page layout. While creating a lead or editing a lead, check this checkbox and the lead will be assigned to one of the designated Sales Reps.

Certain situations affect the Round Robin lead assignment approach, but there are ways to adjust accordingly.

1. If a new sales rep is added

• Modify the Formula field to reflect the total number of Sales Reps.
• Add new lead rule entries to the lead assignment rule.

2. If a sales rep is on leave or sick

• Modify the formula field to reduce the number of sales reps.
• Delete the assignment rule for the rep that is away.

Limitations

Scenarios where Round Robin Lead assignment will have limitations are:

• If lead is to be assigned based on record type.
• If hot leads are to be even distributed and normal leads are also to be evenly distributed.
• If a few sales reps left or are on leave or sick
• Load balancing between leads. If one sales rep is supposed to handle 30% leads and the other sales reps need to handle remaining 70% of the leads.

Appexchange Apps

Various Appexchange apps are available which try to cater to these requirements.

• http://gearscrm.com/apps/round-robin
• http://www.akacrm.com/salesforce/akacrm-applications/round-robin-lead-assignment-engine.html

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What is a round robin in Salesforce?

Speed-to-contact is a key metric companies use to track inbound leads. If your organization has a high volume of inbounds, you need a way to route leads among your available reps in order to reduce the lag time between submitting a contact form and the prospect being touched.

According to livecall.io , the odds of connecting with a lead drops by a factor of 100 if you touch them in 30 minutes vs 5 minutes. The drop-off rate on qualification is 21x if you touch a lead in 30 minutes vs 5 minutes.

It’s no surprise that hot leads are more likely to convert than cold leads, but getting leads connected with reps as soon as possible is key.

To accomplish this, we recommend putting a round robin in place. This is a common solution for good reason — a round robin will evenly distribute leads among your team, ideally taking into consideration which reps are out of office, as well as any territory or account ownership.

Why should I use a round robin?

Besides reducing the time it takes for a sales rep to touch an inbound prospect, a round robin helps avoid a problem almost every sales team faces: cherry-picking reps.

When companies dump all inbound leads into a queue and let sales reps select the leads they want to target, cherry picking is almost inevitable. On one hand, this allows reps to focus on the leads that make the most sense to them. On the other, though, this practice may mean that some leads are never touched, and a lead you don’t touch will never become a customer.

Another great reason to create a round robin is to create a level playing field among your reps. We’ve seen situations where certain SDRs stand out because they monitor the inbound lead queue, fishing for new inbounds, rather than focusing on their key role of outbound prospecting.

Furthermore, in the absence of a round robin, your team can become hugely distracted, and frustrated, by reps arguing over who should own a new inbound.

Who should use a round robin?

Companies with a high volume of inbound leads need some sort of routing system in place, and a round robin will make sure those leads are evenly distributed. At a minimum, you want to make sure leads are routed to the reps in the appropriate territory and vertical. Dumping leads into a single, free-for-all queue with no regard to territory or vertical will lead to lower conversion rates and unhappy prospects.

In an ideal scenario, a basic round robin does the following:

• Routes leads randomly among your team members
• Pauses routing to reps who are out of office

Who should not use a round robin?

Some Kicksaw customers ask for a round robin when there isn’t a clear need for one. Leadership hears that a round robin will reduce friction among their sales team and improve speed-to-contact and decides they definitely need one, but that’s not necessarily the case. A round robin is not a silver bullet.

If your sales efforts are targeted at enterprise companies and you have few inbounds, the costs of building and maintaining a round robin will likely outweigh the benefits, at least in the short term.

Here’s a simple test to determine if a round robin makes sense for your company: have you ever heard two, or more, reps arguing over ownership of an inbound?

If the answer is yes, you probably need a round robin as soon as possible (and maybe less testy reps). If you haven’t, though, you probably don’t need one.

How does a round robin work?

When a lead submits a contact form on your website and you have a round robin in place, the following will occur:

• The lead is created in Salesforce
• The sales rep who is next in line is assigned as the owner
• If no contact is made within X minutes, the lead is rerouted

What out-of-the-box tools work for creating a round robin?

There are many tools out there that can help route leads among your team. The most commonly used product we see for lead routing is LeanData . LeanData can be great if you need extra features like attribution, but for 95% of our customers, a custom-built lead routing process works best.

Many businesses want flexibility to make changes to how leads are routed, but also wanted to avoid recurring costs. They find that many of the most popular round-robin tools have features that don’t apply to them.

For example, multi-touch marketing attribution is something lead routing tools offer that really doesn’t make sense for most businesses. We tend to recommend a crawl > walk > run approach to administration and development in Salesforce, and a multi-touch attribution tool is the equivalent of sprinting for most companies.

What skills do I need to build a round robin in Salesforce?

Unfortunately, we haven’t found many vendors who have built really solid, scalable round robin tools that natively work in Salesforce. The things we expect a quality round robin to do (but that we rarely see) are:

• Route the lead to an account owner if a matching account already exists in Salesforce
• Re-route the lead if it is not accepted within the SLA
• Route the lead to the appropriate territory
• Notify leadership if leads are being missed

An ideal round robin covers all of those scenarios and more. Unfortunately, this means you’ll almost certainly need to build a round robin from scratch. Luckily, the process is doable, even for junior admins.

At a minimum, you’ll need to know how to do the following in Salesforce:

• Create an record-triggered flow
• Create custom objects
• Create custom fields
• Create lead assignment rules
• Create lead queues

Step 1: Object Design

Custom object: round_robin__c.

A round robin is an object we use to store a grouping of assignees. For example, maybe you have one round robin for North America, one for APAC, and another for EU/UK.

• Is_Active__c

Custom Object: Round_Robin_Assignee__c

Within each round robin, you’ll have assignees. A given sales rep could be tied to multiple round robins, and a single round robin can have many assignees.

• (Lookup, User) – [Required]
• Last_Assigned__c
• Round_Robin__c
• (Master-Detail, Round_Robin__c)

Step 2: Round Robin Lead Queue

For each round robin, create a lead queue in Salesforce with the exact same name as the round robin record that will be created. Use this to look up the appropriate round robin assignee.

Step 3: Lead Assignment Rule

Lead assignment rules are invoked when a new lead is created. Add filter criteria that fit your team’s structure. In this example, you need a lead assignment rule for North America, APAC, and EU/UK.

North America: Lead.Country = [‘United States’, ‘Canada’, ‘Mexico’] APAC: Lead.Country = [‘Japan’, ‘China’, ‘Singapore’, …] EU/UK: Lead.Country = [‘United Kingdom’, ‘France’, ‘Germany’, …]

The assignee for each should be each of the lead queues you created in the previous step.

Activate your assignment rule. Note that in the screenshot below, we only show the North America assignment.

Step 4: Email Template

Create the email template that will be used to email the lead’s owner.

Step 5: Workflow Email Alert

Create an email alert, as shown below, that is populated with the email template created in Step 4. Ensure that it is also populated with the lead object and that the recipient is the lead owner.

Step 6: Round Robin Flow

The following example shows an abridged way to create your round robin flow using declarative development.

Create your round robin flow in the Flow Builder. When finished, your flow should look similar to the following image:

Create Variables

Before creating any flow elements, create your flow resource variables.

RecordId – This variable will be populated with the ID of the lead that launched the round robin flow. Be sure to make this variable available for input so that the record-triggered flow (which you will create later) can populate it.

RR Name – This variable will be populated with the developer name of the queue that was assigned through the Lead Assignment rule. Be sure to make this variable available for input so that the record-triggered flow (which you will create later) can populate it.

NOW_Formula – This formula resource will contain the NOW() function so that the round robin assignee’s datetime field can be populated.

Create Flow Elements

Now let’s dive into each of those flow elements you need to create.

Get Round Robin Record – This element searches for an active round robin record whose name matches the RRName (populated with the developer name of the queue the lead is currently assigned to).

Round Robin Record Found? – This important step ensures that a round robin record meeting the search criteria from the first element was successfully found. It does this by checking if the Get Round Robin Record element is not NULL. If the element is not NULL, then the flow will continue to the next element. If it is NULL, the flow will stop at this point and no further flow elements will be evaluated. Without this step, the flow may throw exception errors when no round robin record is found.

Get Round Robin Assignee – This element will retrieve an active round robin assignee record whose Round Robin lookup field (which contains the round robin’s ID value) matches the ID of the round robin record that was found at the start of the flow.

This element is used to choose the round robin assignee that has not received a lead recently, ensuring fair lead distribution.

Round Robin Assignee Record Found? – This element, similar to the one from Step 2, ensures that the flow will only continue to run if a round robin assignee record was found. If found, the flow proceeds. If not found, the flow will stop at this point. Again, this is to avoid any exception errors.

Update Lead Owner – This element is where the lead’s owner will be updated to the round robin assignee. The element first queries a lead whose ID is the same as the ID of the lead that is moving through this flow (which is contained in the RecordId flow resource that you will populate later with a record-triggered flow). Set the OwnerId of the lead to the User field of the round robin assignee record.

Update Round Robin Assignee Date Assigned – This element updates the Last Assigned datetime field on the round robin assignee record with the current date and time. It first retrieves the assignee record whose ID field matches the ID of the assignee we found earlier in the flow, then it sets the Last Assigned field to the NOW_Formula resource you created earlier.

Email New Lead Owner – This “action” element is where the new lead owner will be emailed with the email template you created earlier, and is populated with the name of the workflow email alert that you created earlier. Populate this with the RecordId variable.

Once you have completed this step, you are ready to save and active your flow!

To summarize, this is what your shiny new flow does:

• Look up the round robin whose name matches the developer name of the queue the lead is assigned to
• Look up the least-recently assigned round robin assignee
• Assign lead to assignee
• Set the round robin assignee’s Last Assigned Date to NOW()
• Notify assignee via email

Step 7: Record-triggered Flow

Now you will trigger your invokable flow using a record-triggered flow. This type of flow listens for when a new lead is assigned to a queue in order to invoke your round robin flow.

When finished, the record triggered flow will look similar to what you see in the screenshot below:

First, create a record-triggered flow and configure it on the lead object.

Next, set the Entry Conditions to Lead Owned by Queue . You can do this by setting the criteria to "OwnerId Starts With ‘00G’."

Since all queues have an ID value that starts with “00G,” this formula ensures that the record-triggered flow will only trigger if the lead owner ID starts with those three characters.

Drag a subflow element onto the flow canvas to invoke the round robin flow that you created.

Now configure the subflow element to call your round robin flow setting using the following parameters:

• Referenced Flow: Round Robin Flow
• Label: Round Robin Flow
• API Name: Autopopulated
• RecordId: Hit the toggle to include this and set the Lead Id by using the $Record variable
• RRName: Hit the toggle to include this and set the RRName using the queue’s developer name (which is accessible through the $record variable)

Referenced Flow – Round Robin Flow

Label – Round Robin Flow (using the same label as the flow name is not required, but it makes your flow easier to read and troubleshoot)

API Name – Auto-populated when you enter the label

RecordId – Hit the toggle to include this and set the Lead Id by using the $record variable.

RRName – Hit the toggle to include this and set the RRName using the queue’s developer name (which is accessible through the $record variable). This variable is populated with the developer name of the queue that currently owns the lead. This will be used later to match the round robin records.

Now draw a line from the start box to your subflow element.

Now save your flow and name it "Before Save | On Create | Lead - Round Robin."

Once done, you can activate your flow!

Step 8: Test

Create a round robin record with Active marked as True, and name it North_America . (Make sure you keep that underscore in there.

Create a round robin assignee record with Active marked as True, the User field populated, and the Round Robin field populated with the North_America round robin record.

Create a lead with a Country value of “United States” and ensure that the Assign using active assignment rule box at the bottom of the Edit window is checked.

Review lead history. Was the owner changed?

Look up round robin assignee. Does Last_Assigned__c = NOW()?

Step 9: Deploy

• Create change set
• Change set components
• Round Robin + related fields
• Round Robin assignee + related fields
• Round Robin Flow
• Before Save | After Create | Lead - Round Robin
• Lead Process
• Email Template
• New Lead Assigned
• Email Alert
• Push/Validate/Deploy change set
• Insert round robin records
• Insert round robin assignee records
• Activate Round Robin Flow
• Activate Before Save | After Create | Lead - Round Robin Flow

Step 10: Test Again

• Insert lead
• Confirm lead assignment changed
• Confirm Round_Robin_Assignee__r.Last_Assigned__c is set

Common Round Robin Questions

Can i reroute a lead if it isn’t accepted.

If a user sets the lead status to Unqualified or Rejected within 30 minutes, ideally, the user should be moved to the top of the round robin.

To do this, create a process for Leads which is invoked if the status is set to Unqualified or Rejected . When that happens, launch a flow to look up Round_Robin_Assignee__c where id = User.Id.

That flow needs to set Last_Assigned__c to NULL, which would effectively put the user at the top of the list for the next lead.

We also recommend adding alerts for Sales Ops to review any rejected leads and make changes where appropriate.

Can we integrate a round robin with Slack?

There are a few ways to achieve this. Reference the following sources:

• Custom build

What if the email address for the lead bounces?

New leads in the system aren’t always fully qualified (or real), and sometimes you need to route an additional lead to a rep. Just as for disqualified leads, you can create a process that dictates that if an email bounces, you invoke the same process as you do for rejected leads by setting the lead status to Bounced.

How Can Kicksaw Help?

We’re well versed in building round robins of all shapes and sizes. If you’re looking for expert guidance, or you need help with other Salesforce tools, please email us at [email protected] or fill out the form at the bottom of this page! We’d love to hear from you.

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How to Create Custom Salesforce Round Robin Processes

• Marketing Automations , Pro Tips , Strategy
• February 16, 2023

min. reading

One of the most common assignment needs for Salesforce leads and cases is to circulate these via a round robin assignment process. But assignment in the marketing, sales or any other team for that matter does not necessarily stop at these objects. 

A common way to round-robin assign items is by using an auto number field and formula to create a round robin ID , which can be used in case or lead assignment rules or with other automation tools. 

But, this can sometimes be difficult to maintain when users leave the organization or change roles and responsibilities. It may also fall short when you have other process complexities, like handling holidays and PTO.

What if there was another way to manage the assignment of standard and custom Salesforce objects like leads, tasks, or opportunities?  

This blog will walk you through a custom opportunity Salesforce round-robin process. And what’s even better is that this solution can be used for lots of objects in Salesforce, which do not typically have assignment rules (or do!) 

Create Two New Salesforce Custom Objects A custom assignment process can be created using multiple components and is intended to be more accessible to manage than other solutions with the help of two new custom objects.

To make the assignment of an object more manageable; we first need to create two custom objects; Assignment Group and Assignment Group Members .

Assignment Group

First create a new custom object called “Assignment Group.”

A record of this custom object signifies a group or team that you would like to round robin through to assign specific records (i.e. North America Sales Team). 

Assignment Group Member

Create a second custom object called “Assignment Group Member” and create a Master-Detail Relationship on this custom object so that this is the detail record in the master detail relationship with Assignment Group. 

Next, add a lookup field to the Assignment Group Member to the User object and the following fields:

• “Last Assignment Date” : Data Type: Date/Time
• “Out of Office Start” : Data Type: Date
• “Out of Office End” : Data Type: Date
• Out_of_Office_Start__c <= TODAY() && TODAY() <= Out_of_Office_End__c,

TODAY()<= Out_of_Office_Start__c )

Create Your Assignment Groups & Members

Now that you have your custom objects built, you can create your Assignment Group Records. You may have one Assignment Group or Multiple; depending on the objects or groups that you like to assign. For example; you may have an Onboarding Assignment Group to Round Robin Onboarding Tasks within the Onboarding team and a Regional Sales Team to distribute opportunities to your Sales Reps in a particular region. 

Once the groups have been created; you can add your Group Members. For a user to be part of the assignment queue, they must be part of the Assignment Group with their own Assignment Group Member record.  

Users must be related to the Assignment Group Member Record through the custom lookup field on the object. Additionally, the member will not be assigned records if the custom checkbox of “Active” is false. This checkbox is calculated based on the formula which assesses whether the current date/time is within the Out of Office Start and End dates.

The last assignment date can be manually edited but is filled in automatically within the Round Robin Assignment Flow.

Round Robin Assignment Flow

The final step to facilitate the assignment for a flow that is triggered when the record you are looking to assign is created (in most cases, although this could be triggered when a field is updated).

Create a record triggered flow

You can set this up by creating a record triggered flow, and selecting the object you would like this to be triggered on. Set your entry criteria for the flow, whether that is for a task with a certain subject or an opportunity at a certain stage.

The second element in the flow is a decision element, which you can select by clicking on the plus under the entry criteria. This decision element has been added to decide the team/group to round robin and branch into two paths based on the opportunity location. If you only have one Assignment Group for this object, you can move onto the next stage without adding the decision element.

Add a Get Records element

Add second Get Records element

Next, add a second Get Records element after this to retrieve the Assignment Group Members in this assignment group. 

You can do this by selecting the object Assignment Group Member and entering the “Assignment Group” field, with the operator “equals” and the Assignment Group record Id from the previous Get records element. 

Add an additional filter to only return Assignment Group Members that are active (eliminating any Assignment Group Members on Annual Leave or Unavailable for Assignment).

This time, we will still retrieve the first record, but the sort order is key here to ensure that the round robin works as expected and the oldest recently assigned member is selected. You can do this by setting the sort order as “Ascending” and Sort by as “Last Assignment Date.”

Update the owner of the record

The final steps in this path are to update the owner of the record to be the retrieved user from this Get element and update their Last Assigned Date on their member record.

Add an Update Records element to the flow, and select “Use the record that triggered the flow.” Select the relevant field to update — in this case Owner — and select the User from the Get Assignment Group Member User Id element.

Then, create another Update Related Records element and select “Specify conditions to identify records, and set fields individually.” Select the Assignment Group Member from the objects list and specify the record to update where the “ID” equals the ID from the previous Get Assignment Group Member element. Select the relevant field to update — in this Last Assignment Date — and select Flow> Current Date/Time .

See if your flow looks like this

Repeat the steps on the other decision paths as needed. The flow should look something like this, if you have multiple assignment groups to round robin in the flow. 

Additional Considerations

• Consider creating a  custom Rollup Summary on the Assignment Group object to record the number of Assignment Group Members in the Assignment Group. You can also filter this to show only active Assignment Group Members.
• If any changes are made to the name of the Assignment Group record or any additional Assignment Groups created; this must be updated in the Round Robin Assignment Flow.
• Make sure to debug and test the flow before making this live to make sure that everything works as desired.
• You can also add in a Send Email Action to the flow or a Custom Notification to notify the user of the assignment at the end of the flow.
• Ensure that the necessary users have access to the tabs created of the custom object; you could delegate permissions to Team managers to manage the users available to round robin and annual leave.

Great Solution for Complex Salesforce Object Routing Needs

In summary, this solution can help all teams with complex object routing needs or for admins who would like a more manageable solution than other round robin configurations. 

The ability to assign records to users and consider availability in a front end facing way allows records to be actioned in an efficient manner; removing wasted time re-assigning records for users that are on holiday or have left the business.  If you need further assistance with your business automation needs, feel free to reach out to the Sercante team where we can help you build scalable business solutions.

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How to create a round robin lead assignment rule in Salesforce

If you manage a sales team who are working with new inbound leads and you want to equally divide these, this is for you!

Craig Maxwell

Building repeatable revenue engines by combining excellent people, processes, and technologies. 🚀

First off, what even is a round robin? In Salesforce CRM terms it refers to a method of evenly assigning leads to users within a team in a series or sequence.

When would I need this?

For example, you have 5 SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) working with new inbound leads and as a Salesforce administrator, you want to equally divide these between the team.

“A round robin rule allows you to equally distribute new lead records without having to manually assign them using a rotation as shown below"

Lead number (1) goes to SDR 1 Lead number (2) goes to SDR 2 Lead number (3) goes to SDR 3 Lead number (4) goes to SDR 4 Lead number (5) goes to SDR 5 Lead number (6) goes to SDR 1 Notice the rotation here? ☝ ‍ Lead number (7) goes to SDR 2 Lead number (8) goes to SDR 3

And so on...

To achieve this in Salesforce you need to create 2 custom fields on the lead object, an auto number field and a formula field.

Read on and we’ll walk you through how to create and use these to automatically distribute leads and have your sales team thinking you’re some kind of magical Salesforce wizard... 🧙

To create the new fields go to Setup > Object Manager > Lead > Fields & Relationships and select New and choose the data type 'Auto Number' and hit 'Next'.

Creating the auto number field:

On Step 2 add in the following options:

Field Label: Lead Number Display Format: {0} Starting Number: 1 Field Name: Lead_Number

Building out the Lead Number options:

A unique number will now be assigned to this field for each new lead record created in a sequence.

Auto number fields are not editable by users, as new records are created this number will increase, the first lead '1', the next '2', and so on.

You may also see a checkbox to tells Salesforce to 'Generate Auto Number for existing records'.

If you need to assign existing records a number go ahead and check this box, leaving this unchecked will result in only new lead records moving forward will being assigned a number and routed.

Next you will need to create a new formula field that will take the auto number generated by Salesforce and assign it with sequential value that falls within a range you specify (It is this formula that makes the round robin rotation possible).

Create a new formula field with the following options:

Field Label: Round Robin ID Field Name: Round_Robin_ID Formula Return Type: Number Options: Decimal Places = 0

Click 'Next'

Creating the Round Robin ID field:

Select the 'Advanced Formula' tab and in the formula editor type in the following:

MOD(VALUE({!Lead_Number__c}) ,3) +1

Advanced Formula Settings:

This MOD function takes the "Lead Number" created earlier and applies a bit of math to only return a number within a specified range.

The '3' in this case means that it will only return the numbers 1, 2, or 3. If you were to change the '3' in the MOD formula here to '5' you’ll get a result of either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 as your Round Robin ID.

“Now that we have a method to tag each lead with sequential Round Robin IDs, we can use this ID to create a Salesforce Lead Assignment Rule."

Type 'Lead Assignment Rules' into the quick find search in setup and navigate to 'Lead Assignment Rules' and select 'New'.

Give your new rule a name, tick the "Active" checkbox and click “Save”.

Creating the lead assignment rule:

On the next screen click on the 'Rule Name' for the rule you just created and click the 'New' button.

Lead assignment rule continued:

Sort Order = 1

Object = Lead, Field = Round Robin ID, Operator = 1

Select the users to be assigned the lead and make sure to select an email template so that you are notifying the new owner of a new lead flying their way! 💥

Click 'Save & New' to create repeat these steps creating a rule for each rep that needs to be assigned a lead based on the Round Robin ID.

Bear in mind, the "Sort Order" sets the order in which your rules are evaluated.

To test your new assignment rule, make sure your lead page under 'Layout Properties' has the 'Assign using active assignment rules' checkbox marked as 'Show on edit page.

You can then create a new lead and check the 'Assign using active assignment rule' checkbox before saving to trigger your new assignment rule.

Thanks for reading & please share this if it helps you! 👏

Get started today!

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