round robin lead assignment dynamics 365

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Understand record distribution in assignment rules

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In Dynamics 365 Sales, assignment rules automatically distribute, or assign, new and updated leads, opportunities, and insights to your sales team. The automated process saves you time and effort and optimizes the workload across your sales team.

Assignment rules can distribute these records in either of two ways: round robin or load balancing.

• In round robin distribution , the primary consideration is when sellers were last assigned a record.
• In load balancing distribution , the primary consideration is their capacity, or how many active records they're working on.

Depending on its definition, a rule that prioritizes load balancing might still use round robin criteria to assign records to sellers.

It's important to understand both the differences between them and how other criteria—like your sellers' workload and schedules—affect how records are assigned.

Segments and assignment rules are part of the work assignment feature. Work assignment is available in sales accelerator version 9.1.23074.10021 and is rolling out in phases in different regions. Learn more about work assignment .

Round robin distribution

Round robin assignment distributes a new or updated record fairly among the sellers who meet the rule's criteria. It gives the record to the seller who's waited the longest for a new lead, opportunity, or insight, including records that were assigned manually or by an add-in.

Let's look at an example to understand round robin distribution.

A lead comes into the system at 1:33 PM. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, three sellers can potentially work on the lead:

Miriam's last assignment is earlier than Sanjay's and Susana's. She's been waiting longest, so the lead is assigned to her and her last assignment time is updated.

Another lead comes into the system at 1:50 PM. This time, only Miriam and Sanjay have the required attributes to work on it:

But this time, Sanjay has been waiting longer than Miriam. Sanjay gets the lead.

Load balancing distribution

Load balancing assignment finds the sellers who meet the rule's criteria and gives the record to the one who can take on more work. This method makes sure that all salespeople have a fair share of work and reduces uneven workloads.

Let's look at an example to understand load balancing distribution.

A lead comes into the system. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, three sellers can potentially work on the lead:

Susana can handle more work right now than Miriam or Sanjay. Susana gets the lead, and her available capacity is now 14.

Continuing with this example, let's assume that Miriam, Sanjay, and Susana can all potentially work on the next few incoming leads.

Two new leads come into the system. Susana still has the most available capacity, so the leads are assigned to her. Afterward, their available capacity looks like this:

One more lead comes into the system. Sanjay and Susana are equally available. Susana got a lead more recently, so the new one is assigned to Sanjay based on round robin criteria. Now their available capacity looks like this:

Miriam closes three leads, increasing her available capacity to 13. A new lead comes into the system. Miriam now has the most capacity, so it's assigned to her.

Other distribution criteria

Assignment rules prioritize fairness in different ways depending on whether you select round robin or load balancing distribution. But fairness isn't the only consideration when records need to be assigned. They can also consider whether sellers are available to take on more work—that is, sellers' workload and work schedule.

Consider seller workload

In your assignment rule definitions, you can select Assign record type based on seller capacity . This option distributes records only to sellers who have the capacity to work on them. If no one does, the records are left unassigned.

Let's look again at our sales team, a little later on the same day.

A new lead comes into the system. Based on the selection criteria that are defined in the assignment rule, four sellers can potentially work on it:

With round robin distribution alone, Miriam would get the lead because she's been waiting longer for an assignment than the others. However, you told the rule to Assign leads based on seller capacity , and Miriam's available capacity right now is –2. Sanjay has been waiting next longest, but his available capacity is 0. The lead goes to Susana.

If no seller who met the criteria had available capacity greater than zero, the lead would be left unassigned.

Consider seller work schedule

In your assignment rule definitions, you can select Assign if a seller is available within N hours , where N is a whole number from 1 to 120. This option distributes records only to sellers whose work schedule shows they're available within the time you select. If no one is, the records are left unassigned. Learn how to set sellers' availability .

The rule considers matched sellers first by assignment priority (load balancing or round robin) and then by who is available, from now up to the maximum time allowed.

As shown in the following diagram, matched sellers are divided into six buckets of 24 hours each based on their work schedules. If no sellers fall in the first bucket, round robin distribution supersedes load balancing even if load balancing distribution is prioritized. The rule continues to evaluate the buckets from top to bottom. When it encounters a nonempty bucket, the rule assigns the lead to the sellers in the bucket based on round robin criteria.

Let's look at an example to understand how sellers' work schedules affect the assignment of records.

In your assignment rules, you prioritize round robin distribution and set a time limit of 48 hours.

A new lead comes into the system on a Friday evening from an inquiry form on your website. Several sellers meet the criteria of an assignment rule, but none of them are working now. Next, the rule considers matching sellers who are available within the next 24 hours. That day is Saturday. Ordinarily, Sanjay would be working, but his calendar says he's on vacation. No other sellers are available, so the rule looks at the next 24 hours. No one is working on Sunday either. The rule has reached the limit of 48 hours, so the lead is left unassigned. If the time limit had been 60 hours, the lead would have been assigned to the first seller who was available on Monday morning.

Let's look at a few more examples in detail to understand how seller availability and workload affect round robin and load balancing distribution. We'll use the following notation for a seller's availability at the time of routing:

• 0D - Currently available
• 1D - Earliest available within 24 hours
• 2D - Earliest available from 24 to 48 hours
• 3D - Earliest available from 48 to 72 hours
• 4D - Earliest available from 72 to 96 hours
• 5D - Earliest available from 96 to 120 hours

Example 1: Round robin, consider seller availability only

The rule matched the following sellers:

Two sellers, Vivek and Sal, are available first. Vivek got a lead more recently than Sal, so the rule distributes the lead to Sal.

The next leads to come in are assigned to Vivek, then to Sal, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes. The sellers' capacity isn't a consideration.

Example 2: Load balancing, consider seller availability only

Again, the rule matched the following sellers:

Again, Vivek and Sal are available first. This time, Vivek has the higher capacity, so the rule distributes the lead to him.

The next leads to come in are assigned to Vivek until his capacity falls below Sal's. Following leads go to Sal until his capacity falls below Vivek's, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes. In this scenario, the sellers' capacity isn't a consideration. Vivek's and Sal's capacity can fall below zero as long as they're available before the others.

Example 3: Load balancing, consider seller availability and capacity

Once again, the rule matched the following sellers:

Because Assign leads based on seller capacity has been selected in the assignment rule definition, the rule ignores Vivek and Sal even though they're available first. That leaves Burt, Maya, and Maria:

Burt and Maya are available before Maria, so Maria is dropped from consideration:

The rule is configured to prioritize load balancing. However, load balancing distribution only works with sellers who are available at the time of routing. Because Burt and Maya aren't available now, the rule uses round robin criteria instead.

With capacity no longer a consideration, the rule considers who's been waiting for a lead longer:

The rule assigns the lead to Maya. The next leads to come in are assigned to Burt, then to Maya, and so on, until the availability of the matched sellers changes.

• Create and activate an assignment rule
• Set capacity for sellers

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Additional resources

Round Robin Algorithm

Round Robin Routing & Assign App enables systematic and automatic distribution of Leads to the respective team members. Here we will see how Leads are assigned using Round Robin Algorithm.

In this method, users are assigned Leads in sequence. For e.g. Consider there are 3 members in a team namely – A, B & C. With Round Robin method, the first Lead will be assigned to A, the second Lead to B, third Lead to C and the fourth Lead will be again assigned to A. In this sequence Leads will be assigned to the users.

To assign Leads as per Round Robin method, follow the steps given below:

1) Navigate to Round Robin Routing & Assign App -> Assignment Configuration ->Select the respective Assignment Configuration -> Click on New Assignment Rule .

2) Enter mandatory field details as illustrated below and click on ‘Save’.

• Name: Give name, for e.g. Hot Lead
• Assignment Configuration: Select respective configured Entity, for e.g. Lead.
• Description: Provide description, for e.g. Lead from Website.
• Criteria Mode: Select between ‘Simple’ or ‘Advanced’ criteria mode. ‘Simple’ mode is based on ‘Views’ and ‘Advanced’ is based on Fetch Xml.
• Execution Order: Give numeric value, for e.g. 1. If there are two or more Round Robin based Assignment Rules then this field states the order in which Rules are to be executed while assigning Leads.
• Queue: Select the respective Queue.
• Assignment Algorithm: Select between Round Robin and Capacity. Here we selected Round Robin.
• Max Work Items Allowed to be Assigned: This field denotes the maximum number of work items that is allowed to be assigned to users. For example – 5. Here, each user will be assigned maximum 5 Leads.
• Open Work Item Statuses: Select the status from the dropdown, for e.g. Open-New. Here, based on the status ‘Open-New’ Leads will be assigned to users. Once the Lead ‘s status changes from Open-New to another status then then that Lead will be considered as completed and automatically another Lead with status as ‘Open-New’ is assigned to the same user. This process will go on till all the Leads are assigned.

Once the assignment rule is set you can again update ‘Max Work Items Allowed to be Assigned’ field as per your requirement. Just go to the existing ‘Assignment Rule’ and enter new value in the ‘Max Work Items Allowed to be Assigned’ field. Once the new value is entered, a dialog box will appear asking for confirmation. Click on ‘Confirm’ tab to update the new value. Now, records that are present in the Queues which are associated with the Assignment Rule will be auto assigned to the users as per the updated value.

In this way, Leads are assigned based on Round Robin Algorithm ensuring systematic and fair distribution of Leads between team members.

For more information, kindly visit our website or mail us at [email protected] for feedback and suggestions.

Go back to Round Robin Routing & Assign InfoCentre homepage .

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For microsoft business applications, customizing | dynamics 365 sales, round robin lead assignment in microsoft dynamics crm 2011.

Post Author: Joe D365 | April 29th, 2011

Here's a scenario involving a sales team dealing with round robin lead assignment. Let's say a sales department is currently receiving leads via their website using a custom Web-to-Lead component. When these leads are received, they are assigned to a Sales Coordinator for distribution to the sales team. The business receives hundreds of leads per day via their website so a lot of the Sales Coordinator's time is spent assigning these leads to the sales folks. The sales leaders are concerned that too much of their Sales Coordinator's time is being devoted to assigning leads.

Let's say that the leads are assigned on a rotating or 'round-robin' basis. After a lead is assigned to Salesperson #1, she goes to the 'back of the line' and the next lead is assigned to Salesperson #2. After being assigned the lead, Salesperson #2 goes to the back of the line and Salesperson #3 get the next lead, and on and on it goes…

Our first instinct is to create a plugin to solve this issue. With a plugin we could reference a 'counter file' which would keep track of the next salesperson to receive the created lead. Plugins can (sometimes) be costly to develop, though, so is there another way to do this type of automatic assignment?

This may seem like a difficult request since a workflow doesn't have any 'context.' The workflow doesn't know if it is the first time that it is running or the fiftieth. We also can't access a reference file via a workflow (out of the box). Surely a plugin would be the only way to do this, right???

Sounds like a business problem! Let's solve it!

THE SOLUTION

As stated above, a workflow doesn't have any 'context'. There is no way to specify in the workflow that if this is the third time the workflow is running assign the lead to Salesperson #3 and if it is the fourth time it is running assign the lead to Salesperson #4. One thing a workflow CAN do, however, is access a related parent record.

With that piece of information in mind I was able to do the following:

Create a new entity called 'Counter'. This entity only has one attribute: Counter Number.

> This new entity will have a 1:N relationship to the lead entity > There will ONLY ever be 1 counter record in the system. We will update this record in the workflow

With this new parent entity in place, we can now create a workflow that does a CHECK CONDITION on this counter entity.

> If Counter = 1, assign lead to Salesperson 1 > If Counter = 2, assign lead to Salesperson 2 > If Counter = 3, assign lead to Salesperson 3

Before we can do the check condition in the workflow we first need to relate the lead to the counter entity. We do this by doing an UPDATE step as the first step in the workflow

Note that we hardcoded the reference to our Counter record. We DID NOT use a dynamic value.

Now that we have the connection to the counter created, we can now do our check condition as the next step in the workflow:

After the check condition, we then do our ASSIGNMENT step

After assigning the lead, we now need to increment the COUNTER by 1:

NOTE: notice that we did not do a dynamic value here, we hardcoded the value.

We now would create check and assign conditions for when the Counter equaled 2, 3 and so on…

When finished, your workflow will look something like this:

Finally, set your workflow to run automatically on record create and you are all set!

So there you have it: a round robin workflow assignment process created easily with a workflow. No need for custom plugins or extensive development. If you think this is cool and want to work with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Experts at PowerObjects – let us know we'd be happy to be your experts as well!

Happy CRM'ing!

3 comments on “Round Robin Lead Assignment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011”

You can do the same trick in CRM 4. Here is a blog on how to do it that I wrote last year: http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2010/02/automatic-lead-assignment-using.html

Hello, I`m trying to do it but nothing happened. Once it skipped the `if` and I got: the assigned record was not found. I re-write the all thing and it is still doesn`t work. it seems that it doesn`t recognize the 'lead round robin' entity field (in my case called `name`). What am I missing?

Tried to implement this method but there is a problem because workflows are run asyncronously. If two leads are created at the same time (or relatively close together within seconds), the workflow fires twice and both instances of these jobs see the value "1" when it hit the check condition. The result is both of these leads are assigned to sales person "1".

Since there doesn't seem to be a way to set a workflow to run one after the other, queued, what is the solution to this?

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An App to Automate Lead Assignment in Dynamics 365 CRM using Round Robin Algorithm

Assigning or allotting Leads to respective sales professionals is a very important task. This task, if not handled properly will result in loss of potential clientele which will eventually lead to low sales and low returns. So, in order to make this task effective and effortless, Inogic introduced a new productivity app for PowerApps & Dynamics 365 CRM – Lead Assignment Distribution & Automation .

Lead Assignment Distribution & Automation allots/assigns incoming Leads automatically in Dynamics 365 CRM to respective sales professionals in an organized way. It ensures that Leads are evenly distributed among the sales team members, thus collectively enhancing the productivity of entire team. This increases sales and results in achieving higher ROI.

Now, let’s have a look into few features of Lead Assignment Distribution & Automation.

The most important feature of this app is to assign or distribute Leads using Round Robin & Capacity Algorithm . The below illustration showcases two teams Pre-sales and Post-sales using two different methods to assign Leads - Round Robin Algorithm & Capacity Algorithm.

Round Robin Algorithm

The Pre-sales team consists of three members – Sam, John and Mary. Here, the incoming Leads will be assigned automatically in a systematic way. The first lead will be assigned to Sam, the second lead to John, the third lead to Mary and the fourth lead will be again assigned to Sam. In this way, there will be fair & square distribution of leads among the team members.

Capacity Algorithm

The Post-sales team consists of three members – Missy, Jacob and Leena. Here, the leads are assigned based on the capacity of each team member to handle the workload given to them. As illustrated the capacity of each lead is considered as 25 units and the team members are given capacity depending upon their workload and capability to handle it. So, Missy is given 0 capacity, Jacob is given 50 and Leena is given 100. In accordance with this no new lead will be assigned to Missy, whereas, Jacob will be assigned 2 new leads and Leena will be assigned 4 new leads. In this way, it can be ensured that no team member is overloaded with work resulting in loss of potential sales.

With these two methods you can easily assign the incoming leads among your team members as per your requirement.

But what about the assignment of already existing leads in your Dynamics 365 CRM? Up until now the sole focus was on assigning upcoming new leads.

How will you assign the already existing leads in your CRM?

For that we have yet another feature which will take care of all these existing leads – Run Assignment.

Run Assignment

With Run Assignment you can easily assign the already existing Leads (before the installation of solution) in your CRM to respective team members as per the newly configured assignment rules. You have to just select the leads that you want to assign and click on the ‘Run Assignment’ button. All the selected leads will be automatically assigned to respective team members as per Round Robin or Capacity Algorithm.

With these amazing features Lead Assignment Distribution & Automation ensures that your day-to-day tasks are carried out effortlessly, thereby improving the overall performance of your team and team members.

To know more, download and explore this app from our website.

You can also send us your feedback and suggestions at [email protected]

No related posts.

Lead Assignment and Distribution Automation – Assign Leads using Round Robin & Capacity Algorithm

Lead Assignment and Distribution Automation is a productivity app that systematically allocates or distributes Leads recorded in Dynamics 365 CRM.

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Auto assign case to agents

I want to assign cases created by customer automatically to available user in round robin fashion, can I use omnichannel auto assign, if not how can I make this possible?

No out of the box support for round robin assignment. 

There is queue/team/owner assignment but it is then "first come first serve" - the person first accepting it.

However, you can refer following blog to get some inspiration, which provide logic about how to achieve it:

Round Robin Case Assignment – CRM 2013 – Sagar's Blogs (wordpress.com)

And the the way blog provide is routing case to one team, you can also route case to one queue.

The queue and user is 1:N relationship too, so you can do sane settings when you choose queue.

So you can also use queue entity not team entity if you use the way to do, then you can use code or flow to achieve the logic that blog provide.

Also, you can refer following link to get more ideas.

3rd party plugin:

Assign Leads or Cases automatically in Dynamics 365 CRM using Round Robin or Capacity Algorithm! | Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Tips and Tricks (inogic.com)

Flow/workflow:

Dynamics 365 Round Robin using Microsoft Flow (linkedin.com)

Round Robin Lead Assignment | Dynamics CRM 2011 | PowerObjects

Please mark as  verified  if the answer is helpful. Welcome to join hot discussions in  Dynamics 365 Forums .

Thanks Prateek, but I don't want to route case by skills or presence, I want to route cases in round robin, is it possible?

Yes, you can use entity channel for this purpose only.

Below describes it in detail :

docs.microsoft.com/.../entity-channel

www.crmcat.co.uk/.../

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