I was trying to define a territory in Sales Cloud and ran into something I did not expect. I could not create a Territory for Belgium !! So I set out on a quest to add Belgium on the map again ! It turned out I had to go through 3 steps in order to add ‘Belgium’ as a new territory geography:
- Verify the raw geography data is available in Sales Cloud
- As Sales Cloud can use geography data for multiple purposes, make sure the geography data is available to Territory Management and not just for e.g. Address Verification
- Make sure the geography data is loaded and activated for Territory Management.
Let me walk you through the process.
Manage Geographies
By using the ‘Manage Geographies’ setup and maintenance task, I could confirm that the geography data for Belgium actually existed in my Sales Cloud instance. If your instance lacks some geography data, you can find instructions here on how to upload the reference geography data you need into your Sales Cloud instance.
Having the data loaded does not mean it is available for Territory Management though. This geography data is used for all kind of features: address verification, geocoding, …
Making sure Territory Management knows it can use the Belgian geography data is what the next step is about.
Adding Territory Geographies
Using the ‘Manage Territory Geographies’ setup and maintenance task, I could pinpoint my problem. Although the geography data I needed was loaded into Sales Cloud, it was not enabled for Territory Management. I searched for the ‘Belgium’ and did not get any search results
I wanted Belgium to appear directly under the top level ‘Global’ territory in the territory hierarchy.
Therefore I searched and selected ‘Global’ first before selecting the ‘Add Geography’ menu option. By the way, in case a geography is not added in the correct position in the territory hierarchy, next to the ‘Add’ menu option, there are also menu options to ‘Delete’ or ‘Move’ geographies in the territory hierarchy.
I selected ‘Belgium’ as the highest level of geography I wanted to add as the geography level of detail I needed within Belgium can only be chosen once you submit your selected geography.
Once the geography submitted, the options appeared to choose the level of detail I needed available in Territory Management. I chose to include all details available.
Submitting the geography with the chosen detail options kicks off a background process that needs to complete before you can continue. The status of a background process can be verified on the same page where you can manually start background processes.
Enable Territory Dimensions and Metrics
All that was left to do was to load and activate the new geography dimension definition (select the geography dimension before you choose ‘Load and Activate’ from the ‘Actions’ menu). This again starts a background process but once it completed I was able to define territories for Belgium !
It worked for me, I hope it works for you !
