Highlight and resolve territory overlaps
In MapBusinessOnline you can have sales or service territories overlapping or disjoint, depending on your business rules. Set up the rule before you start building territories as described in the article. There are various reasons why a business may need territories to overlap. For example, you may have a high-potential area that requires more than one sales rep to serve it. In this article we will look at how to highlight territory intersections and how to resolve overlapping territories.
- Highlighting territory overlaps
- Resolve overlapping territories from the map
- Resolve overlapping territories from Data window
Highlighting territory overlaps
- In the Map & Data window stop the mouse pointer over Territories item and click the gear icon that will appear.
- "Manage map and data" dialog will pop up with the territory layer options selected. Choose the vertical Intersections tab, check "Highlight territories intersection on map" box, and select the color for territory overlaps.
- Go back to the map. If your territories overlap, you will see the intersections highlighted with red color.
Resolve overlapping territories from the map
You can resolve territory overlaps simply by selecting overlapping geography units on the map and re-assigning them to appropriate territories.
- Click an overlapping unit (ZIP code in our example) to select it on the map. Hold SHIFT key and click other overlapping units to make multiple selection.
- As you can see on the picture above, the mini-toolbar will appear for the selection. Click "Edit territory" icon.
- "Create or edit territory" dialog will pop up. In the dialog select "Remove from all territories except" option. It will remove selected geography units from all territories except the one that you select on the right side of the dialog.
- Click Edit button in the dialog above to complete the territories editing.
- Repeat the steps to resolve all other territory overlaps on the map.
Resolve overlapping territories from Data window
It's also possible to resolve overlapping territories from Data window. Data window's filtering capabilities come handy in the case.
- Go to Data window in MapBusinessOnline. In the window select the territory alignment layer - ZIP codes layer in our example.
- For each geography unit in the territory alignment layer MapBusinessOnline keeps information on unit's primary territory and all territory count. Let's select the data to show in Data window.
- There is "Choose columns" button in Data window's bottom line. Click it to pull "Select data columns" dialog.
- In the dialog choose General data group. Inside the group select "Territory count" and "Territory" columns. Click the right arrow icon to add the information to Data window. Click "Set data column" button to apply the change.
- "Territory count" and "Territory" columns will be added to Data window.
- Let's filter Data window content to show only geographies where the territories overlap. Click the funnel icon on the Data window's toolbar to open "Filter data" dialog.
- In the dialog enter the criteria to find overlapping geography units: we want to filter units that belong to more than one territory. See the picture below. Click "Filter" button in the dialog to apply the criteria.
- Now in the Data window you can where the territories overlap.
- In Data window select rows (units) you want to remove from the overlapping territories. Select multiple rows by holding SHIFT or CONTROL keys when clicking a row.
- Click "Edit territory" icon on the Data window's toolbar.
- In the dialog that will appear, choose "Only selected geographies" option. Click Next button.
- In the next dialog choose "Remove from all territories except" option and select appropriate territory. Click Edit to update the territories.
- Repeat the steps as necessary to resolve all territory overlaps.
