Automatic region assignment lets Rhythm place contacts and organizations into regions based on their address, so staff do not have to set a region on each record manually. This article explains how to turn it on, choose which records and address Rhythm checks, and write the rules that decide which region a record receives. To create the regions themselves, see Regions.
What It Controls
When automatic region assignment is on, Rhythm checks your rules whenever a contact’s or organization’s address changes. Rhythm assigns the record to the first matching region, and it saves Rest of the World until no other rule matches.
A rule can match on:
- One or more postal code ranges
- One or more U.S. states
- One or more countries
- Rest of the World — a catch-all for any address that matches nothing else
Turning assignment on, or changing your rules, affects records from that point forward. It does not move any record that already has a region.
After a record has a region, you can use that region as a field in your queries. Turning on automatic region assignment is also one of the steps on the CRM setup checklist. When automatic region assignment is on, Region comes from the record’s address, so you may see a Region value on a contact or organization without being able to change it on that record’s edit form. If you need staff to set Region manually instead, turn assignment off or add the Region field to the contact form yourself.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Settings. The Automatic Region Assignment card has the on/off switch and the choices below it. The Region Assignment Rules card, directly underneath it, has the rules. Both cards are part of the CRM settings page, so you save them with that page’s Save Changes button, along with every other setting on the page.
Prerequisites
- You need the permission your administrator grants for editing CRM settings.
- At least one region must already exist before you can choose it in a rule.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic Region Assignment switch | On, off | Off | Turns automatic assignment on or off. When this is off, any rules you have already written stay saved but are not used |
| Automatically Assign Regions To: | Contacts, Organizations, Both Contacts & Organizations | Both Contacts & Organizations | Applies assignment to contacts, organizations, or both |
| What address should we use when assigning contacts to regions? | Preferred, Home, Work, School, Other | Preferred | Chooses which contact address the rules read. Organizations are always assigned by their one address. This setting is hidden when you choose Organizations above, but Rhythm keeps the saved choice |
| Select the custom address type: | One of your account's address types | None | Appears only when the address choice above is Other. It chooses the custom address type to read instead of a standard one |
The address type you choose here only works when your contact forms capture that address. If you assign by Preferred, sometimes called the mailing address, but a contact’s form has no way to enter any address, staff have nothing to save and that contact’s Region stays blank.
If you limit assignment to Organizations, individual contacts never receive an automatic Region of their own, even when they are tied to certification or other organization-level activity. Those contacts keep a blank Region, and a query that filters for Region not equal to a specific value will include them because a blank value satisfies “not equal.”
Tip
After you save a change that affects Region, give it a moment. The recalculated value can take a short time to appear in on-screen callouts. You should not need to save more than once for it to take effect.
Region Assignment Rules
Below those choices, the Region Assignment Rules card lists your rules in the order Rhythm checks them. Select Add Region Assignment Rule to create a rule, use the pencil icon on a row to edit that rule, use the trash icon to remove a rule after confirming, and use the up and down arrows to move a rule earlier or later in the list. Each click moves a rule by only one position, and there is no drag-and-drop or bulk-reorder option. If you have a long list of rules, reordering can take a while, so plan the order as you build your rules to avoid extra moves later.
Tip
If the region or country dropdown in a rule does not load, try changing your browser’s zoom level. An intermittent failure to display that list has been tied to zoom level in the past.
Each rule has a type and, for every type except Rest of the World, the values that type matches:
| Rule type | What you enter | How it matches |
|---|---|---|
| Postal Code | One or more ranges, such as 02101-02299, separated by a semicolon or a new line | Rhythm compares the address’s postal code to each range as text, not as a number. The first code in a range must sort before the second, so a backwards range (02299-02101) matches nothing. You cannot enter postal codes with spaces or ZIP+4 codes as a range. A single postal code by itself is not accepted; enter it as a range with the same start and end, such as 12345-12345 |
| States | One or more U.S. states, chosen from a list | Matches an address whose state exactly matches one of the chosen states. This rule does not check the address’s country, so a state code can match an address outside the United States. American Samoa is not currently offered in this list, even though Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are |
| Countries | One or more countries, chosen from a list | Matches an address whose country is one of the chosen countries. Rhythm treats an address with no country recorded as the United States |
| Rest of the World | Nothing besides a region | Matches any address that no other rule matched |
Every rule also needs a Region, which is the region Rhythm assigns to a matching address.
Some U.S. territory addresses are stored with the country set to United States and the territory recorded in the state field, rather than stored as their own country. A country rule alone can miss those addresses. If records in a territory such as Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands are not getting a region, add that territory to a state rule instead of relying on the country rule to catch it.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Order decides the outcome. Rhythm checks your rules from top to bottom and stops at the first match. If a broader rule, such as a state, sits above a narrower rule, such as a postal code range inside that state, the broader rule wins. Move the more specific rule higher when you want it to take precedence.
- Rest of the World is checked last, wherever it sits in the list. Its position in the table is only a visual reminder to put it last. Rhythm holds it back and uses it only after every other rule fails to match. If you add more than one Rest of the World rule, only one of them decides unmatched addresses, so keep a single catch-all rule to avoid confusion.
- The address choice for contacts matters beyond the rules. With Preferred chosen, a contact’s region can change even when you have not edited that contact’s address, because their preferred address can switch from one address on file to another.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Warning
Turning assignment on, or changing a rule, does not move any record that already has a region. Existing contacts and organizations keep whatever region they already have until you run a region recalculation from Maintenance Tasks. The settings page shows a warning whenever you change the switch or one of the three choices above it. The warning does not appear just from adding, editing, deleting, or reordering a rule, so do not assume regions are current just because you did not see it.
- Deactivating a region removes it from the region choices on contact and organization forms, but a rule that still names that region can still assign records to it.
- Editing or removing a rule affects only addresses changed after you save. It does not re-check existing records.
To move a broad set of existing records into a new, broader region, such as a catch-all for several ZIP codes that used to have their own narrower rules, start by adding the new region. Then add or edit a rule so it matches all the addresses you want in that region, move the new rule above the narrower rules it replaces so it takes precedence, optionally delete the narrower rules once you no longer need them, and run Recalculate Region Assignment from Maintenance Tasks to update every existing contact and organization at once.
Permissions
You need the same permission your administrator grants for editing CRM settings as a whole. There is no separate permission for the region assignment card.
Validation and Errors
Rhythm refuses to save your settings when automatic region assignment is on and any required setup is missing. This happens when there are no rules, a rule is missing its type-specific values or its region, or the contact address choice is Other with no custom address type selected.
If Rhythm refuses the save, the reason appears in a message box. Even though the box is titled as if the save succeeded, its text explains what you need to fix, so read the message carefully instead of relying on its title.
Related
See “Related” in the sidebar for the setup checklist and maintenance tasks, including how to recalculate regions for existing records.