Pipeline
A routing typo should break one rule, not your whole pipeline.
There is a one-line decision inside every rules engine that nobody discusses: what to do with a condition it does not recognise. Ignore it, and a misspelled rule matches everything — so one typo quietly routes every new deal to whoever the rule names.
Refuse it, and the same typo produces a rule that simply never fires.
The ladder
Priority order, first match, and nothing beyond it runs.
Rules in an order you set. The first one that matches decides the owner and the rest are not consulted. Two outcomes: a named person, or round robin over a pool.
And above all of it: a deal created with an owner already chosen skips the ladder entirely. A rep who assigns deliberately is never overridden by a rule.
- rule 1Source is a partner referralAna Ferreira
- rule 2Currency is SEKNordics pool · round robin
- rule 3Pipeline is RenewalsRenewals pool · round robin
- An unrecognised condition is rejected when you save it —
With the permitted list shown, so the typo is caught at the keyboard rather than discovered in the pipeline.
- And if one ever got through, it would match nothing —
The safe direction. A rule that never fires is a support ticket; a rule that matches everything is a quarter.
- A blank value never satisfies a condition —
Absence is not a wildcard, so a rule testing a field a particular deal never had simply does not apply to it.
- Round robin survives two deals created at the same instant —
The position advances and commits before the assignment returns, so simultaneous creates cannot both take the first person.
- A pool entry that is no longer valid is skipped —
At the moment of assignment rather than at save, so somebody leaving does not break deal creation.
- No match falls back to the creator —
Rather than leaving a deal with nobody on it, which is the state that makes every downstream reminder useless.
Narrower than it looks
Three conditions, compared for equality.
Where the deal came from, its currency, and which pipeline it is in. That is the whole vocabulary.
No ranges, so "deals over a hundred thousand" cannot be routed. No or, so two countries is two rules. No negation and no list membership. No assigning to a team rather than a person. No awareness of who is on holiday or already carrying forty deals.
It is a small, predictable tool. Knowing its size up front is worth more than discovering it while designing a territory model around it.
- Rules are evaluated, not applied in bulk —
Routing happens once, when the deal is created. It does not sweep afterwards, so a rule added today does not silently reassign last month's pipeline.
- Round robin is in turn, not by load —
Strictly whoever is next. It does not skip somebody on holiday or carrying forty open deals — if that matters, use a named-person rule and change it when the team changes.
›Can a rule route by territory, industry or company size?
No — those are lead-routing conditions, and even there territory is not available. Deal routing sees three fields.
›Can I change a rule's conditions?
A rule can be switched off and deleted. Editing what it tests is currently delete-and-recreate.
›Does routing run when a deal is edited?
No. It runs at creation, when no owner was given. Afterwards, ownership changes by hand or by bulk reassignment.