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Lead Assignment Rules

Updated

Route incoming leads to the right person automatically.

On this page:

Setting up a rule

Assignment rules automate who owns a lead as it arrives, rather than requiring manual triage. Rules can route by geography (postal code, state, city), employee count, any custom field, or round-robin across a team. Almost any lead field can drive a rule, and when a rule applies, both the lead owner and responsible user get set. You must be an administrator to create one.

  1. Click your profile icon and go to System Settings > Lead Assignment Rules.
Navigating to Lead Assignment Rules Setting — The screenshot shows the Insightly CRM System Settings page accessed via the user profile menu in the top right corner, with an arrow pointing to “Lead Assignment Rules” under the Automation section in the left sidebar. This helps users locate where to configure lead assignment rules within their account settings.

Navigating to Lead Assignment Rules Setting

  1. Click Add Rule.
Lead Assignment Rules Settings Page Overview — The Lead Assignment Rules settings page in Insightly CRM displays three existing rules—Website Leads, Zapier Leads, and Manual & Bulk Adds—each assigned to a specific input channel (Web To Lead, API, or Manual Input). An “Add Rule” button in the top right allows users to create additional assignment rules, which control how incoming leads are automatically routed based on their source.

Lead Assignment Rules Settings Page Overview

  1. Name the rule to describe what it does. For example, “Assign by Region” for a rule based on mailing address state.
Lead Assignment Rule Creation Dialog Box — This dialog box allows users to create a lead assignment rule named “Assign by Region” with options to activate it for API, Web To Lead, or Manually Added Leads. Understanding this setup is important for configuring how incoming leads are automatically distributed to the right team members based on defined criteria.

Lead Assignment Rule Creation Dialog Box

  1. Choose which entry methods the rule applies to: API (including integrations like Unbounce, which creates leads via the Insightly API), Web to Lead form, Manually Added Leads (including copied leads and contacts changed to leads), any combination, or none of the above (usable only during import). Only one active rule can apply to a given entry method at a time. Creating a second rule for manual entries replaces the first for that method. Click Save Rule.
Lead Assignment Rule Setup with Criteria Section — The screen shows a Lead Assignment Rule named “Assign by Region” with activation options for API and Web To Lead sources, along with a Rule Criteria section that is currently empty. This is relevant because it demonstrates how to configure automated lead routing rules and where to add specific criteria to determine how leads get assigned to team members.

Lead Assignment Rule Setup with Criteria Section

  1. Click Add Criteria, then select a field, operator, and value for the leads you want to match. Add more filter rows as needed, joining them with AND (narrows matches) or OR (broadens matches). For example, State/Province equal to CA OR NV OR AZ for a western-region rule.
Lead Assignment Criteria Configuration Interface — The screenshot shows a CRM form for setting up lead assignment rules, including filter criteria fields and options to assign leads to a team or individual users via round-robin distribution. This helps readers understand how to configure automatic lead routing based on specific field values, such as assigning leads from a particular state to a designated salesperson.

Lead Assignment Criteria Configuration Interface

  1. If a rule mixes AND and OR operators, use Filter Logic to group them correctly. Skip this if every operator is the same. See Filter logic below for a worked example.
  2. Select a team or one or more users to receive matching leads. Selecting a team or multiple users triggers round-robin assignment, rotating alphabetically by first name.
Lead Assignment User Selection Options — This screenshot shows the Lead Assignment settings panel where users can choose to assign leads to either a team or individual users via dropdown. It notes that selecting multiple users or a team will distribute leads using a round-robin method, which is important for understanding how incoming leads get routed automatically.

Lead Assignment User Selection Options

  1. Click Save Criteria. To add another set of criteria (for example, a second region), click Add Criteria again and repeat.
  2. Criteria run in order. The first match wins, so sequence matters. Drag the bar to the left of an entry to reorder. It’s worth ending with a broad catch-all (e.g. “if State/Province is empty, assign to the sales manager”) so nothing slips through unassigned.
Lead Assignment Rules Ordered by Territory — A table shows three lead assignment rules that route incoming leads to specific sales reps based on their state or province, with rules for Northeast, Southeast, and Western US regions. The red arrow indicates that a rule is being dragged downward to reorder its priority, which matters because rules are evaluated top-to-bottom and order affects which rule applies first.

Lead Assignment Rules Ordered by Territory

  1. Click Save Rule, then test with a lead through each entry method you enabled. Adjust as needed, and delete test leads once you’ve confirmed it works.

Time Trigger: rules can optionally delay execution by 0–15 minutes after a lead is created, to give enrichment steps (ZoomInfo, AppConnect, custom scripts) time to finish before the rule evaluates. Set this in System Settings > Lead Assignment Rules; execution runs once, after the configured delay.

Lead Assignment Rule Time Trigger Settings — This screen shows the Time Trigger Details section for a Lead Assignment Rule, where users can set a delay (0–15 minutes) before the assignment rules execute. Setting this delay can be useful for controlling when leads are automatically assigned after being created or updated.

Lead Assignment Rule Time Trigger Settings

Filter logic

Combining conditions with and/or operators determines which leads a rule catches, the same filter-logic mechanics used in reports and list views.

For example: two salespeople, Ray and Alex, both work leads from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but Ray follows up by email and Alex by phone. Leads with both a phone number and an email should round-robin between them.

Sales Rep Outreach Method Assignments by Region — A table showing two sales representatives, Ray and Alex, who both cover the RI & MA region but use different outreach methods—Ray handles email outreach while Alex handles phone outreach. This distinction helps users understand how to assign or route contacts based on the preferred communication channel within the same territory.

Sales Rep Outreach Method Assignments by Region

Written as plain filters (Phone is not empty AND Email is not empty AND State = RI OR State = MA) the trailing OR would catch every Massachusetts lead regardless of whether it has contact info, which isn’t the intent. Filter Logic fixes this by letting you group, or nest, the conditions explicitly.

Lead Assignment Criteria with Multiple State Filters — The image shows a lead assignment rule configured to match leads from California, Nevada, or Arizona using three “State/Province equal to” filter rows joined by OR logic. This demonstrates how to set up geographic-based lead routing so that leads from multiple states can be automatically assigned to the appropriate team or user.

1 Lead Assignment Criteria with Multiple State Filters

 Lead Assignment Criteria and Filter Logic Setup — This screen shows a lead assignment rule with four filters targeting leads from Massachusetts or Rhode Island who have both an email and phone on file, using the logic “(1 Or 2) And 3 And 4.” The leads matching these criteria are assigned to an individual user named Ray Alexander, which is relevant for understanding how to route specific leads to the right person automatically.

2 Lead Assignment Criteria and Filter Logic Setup

With the filters numbered on the left, the Filter Logic formula (1 OR 2) AND 3 AND 4 groups the state conditions together before requiring both contact fields. Correctly matching only MA/RI leads that also have a phone and email on file.

As you add more filters, formulas can get more complex. Criteria with five filters can be grouped many ways depending on where you add parentheses, for example:

  • (1 AND 2) OR (3 AND 4) OR 5
  • 1 AND ((2 AND 3) OR 4 OR 5)
  • ((1 AND 2) OR (3 OR 4)) AND 5

Placing parentheses within parentheses is called nesting. Insightly processes the arguments in the innermost parentheses first and works outward, so verify each argument within a set of parentheses one step at a time.

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