Regions are named areas, such as “Northeast” or “International,” that your account uses to group contacts and organizations by geography. Staff can choose a region on a record, or Rhythm can assign one from the record’s address. See Automatic Region Assignment Rules for those rules. This article explains how to create, edit, and delete the regions themselves.
What It Controls
Each region you create appears as a choice on contact and organization forms, and automatic region assignment rules can use it. A region has:
- A name staff and members see, such as “Northeast.”
- A permanent identifier that the API and other connected tools use to refer to the region.
- An active flag. Inactive regions no longer appear on contact and organization forms, but records already assigned to an inactive region keep it.
- Any custom fields your account has defined for regions.
Creating a region does not add contacts or organizations to it. A record gets a region only when someone chooses one by hand or automatic region assignment runs.
Tip
To exclude records with no region assigned from a query or report, add a criterion on the Region field with the operator “is not blank”.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Customers › Regions. This opens Manage Regions, where you can see every region in your account and its status. From there:
- Create Region opens a blank form.
- The pencil icon on a row opens that region for editing.
- The clone icon on a row opens a new region copied from the one you cloned, without its identifier.
- The trash icon deletes a region after you confirm.
Prerequisites
You need the permission your administrator grants for managing regions. Without that permission, you cannot open the Regions page or use its actions.
The Settings
Select Create Region or the edit icon on a row to open the region form.
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name: | Any text | Empty | Required. This is the label staff see wherever they choose a region. Two regions may share the same name; Rhythm does not prevent duplicates |
| ID: | Letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens | Suggested from the name (for example, “North East” suggests NORTH-EAST) | The region’s permanent identifier. You can leave this blank when you create a region, but it is required after the region has been saved once. You cannot change it after that |
| Status: | Active, Inactive | Active | Controls whether contact and organization forms offer this region as a choice |
The form also includes a description and any custom fields your account has defined for regions, but the current form does not show them or let you edit them. When you save, Rhythm keeps whatever values were already stored. If your account uses region custom fields, set or change those values another way, such as through an import or the API. The Regions form will not show the current values.
Dependencies and Precedence
- A region must exist before you can use it in an automatic region assignment rule or choose it on a contact or organization form.
- If your account uses custom fields on regions, you define those fields in System & Security, not on this page. See Custom Fields Explained for how custom fields work in general.
Change Impact and How to Revert
- Renaming a region is safe. Contacts, organizations, and automatic assignment rules refer to a region by its identifier, not its name. The new name appears everywhere the region is used without moving any records, and you can rename it back later.
- Switching a region to Inactive removes it from the choice list on contact and organization forms. It does not stop automatic region assignment: if a rule still names an inactive region, Rhythm keeps placing matching records in it. Records already in the region are not moved when you deactivate it.
- Deleting a region is permanent. There is no undo, and you cannot recreate the region with its history intact.
Warning
You cannot delete a region that any contact, organization, or automatic region assignment rule still refers to. Rhythm refuses the delete and tells you how many records depend on it. Before you delete a region, move every contact and organization out of it, then remove or change any automatic assignment rule that names it.
If you try to save a contact or organization with a region identifier that does not exist in your account, such as from an import or integration, Rhythm refuses the save.
You may also see the built-in Region dropdown on a contact or organization form show blank entries instead of the configured region names, even when your regions are set up correctly. Recalculating region assignment does not fix this display issue. If you see blank entries, choosing one may still save a region on the record, so the underlying data can be correct even when the label looks wrong.
Permissions
Managing regions uses the same permission your administrator grants for the Regions page as a whole. There is no separate permission for creating, editing, or deleting regions. Without that permission, the page actions are unavailable.
Validation and Errors
If you try to save a region without a name, the form will not let you continue. If you try to delete a region that is still in use, Rhythm refuses the delete and keeps the region in the list. Open Relationships from the region’s identifier menu to see what still points at it, then reassign those records or edit the rule before trying again.
Related
See “Related” in the sidebar for the task that sets or views a record’s region.