Salesforce Docs Portal

Overlapping Boundaries in Territory Planning

Overlapping Boundaries is a feature in Territory Planning that allows a geographic boundary, such as a postal code, to be assigned to two or more areas in a live data alignment. This capability is essential for creating highly customized territory designs in dense metropolitan areas, such as New York City or London, where a single boundary can logically belong to multiple sales territories.

Required Editions

Available in: both Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) and Lightning Experience
Available for an additional cost in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions with Sales Planning in English only, and only if you have Web Services API enabled

Key Concepts and Terms

To use this feature effectively, understand how boundaries, units, and rules interact within this model:

Boundary Overlap: Occurs when a single boundary such as a postal code is assigned to two or more areas.

Visual Indicator: Overlapping boundaries are shown on the map and in the boundary legend using a hexagonal "honeycomb" pattern.

Units Must Be Single-Assigned: Although a boundary can be assigned to multiple areas, the units within that boundary (such as accounts or leads) can only be assigned to a single area.

Area-Level Assignment Rules: These rules are mandatory when boundaries overlap. They ensure units are assigned to the correct area based on criteria (e.g., industry, revenue). When you assign an overlapping boundary, assignment rules automatically run for the affected areas.

Example
Example

How Unit Assignment Works with Overlap

Consider an unassigned postal code, 90210, that contains two units: Unit A (Industry: "Tech") and Unit B (Industry: "Aerospace"). You have created two areas, Area 1 and Area 2.

Define Rules: You create an Area Rule for Area 1 where the Industry equals "Tech" OR "Aerospace." Area 2 has no rules.

Assign Boundary: You assign postal code 90210 to both Area 1 and Area 2, creating an overlapping boundary.

Unit Assignment Outcome: Both Area 1 and Area 2 own the postal code boundary. Unit A and Unit B are assigned only to Area 1 because they meet the requirements of Area 1’s assignment rule.

Important
Important If Area 1 did not have assignment rules, the units remain unassigned because is no defined criteria to determine their clear destination with shared boundaries.