The first question anybody asks about automatic assignment is why they got this one. The second, usually from a manager, is why nobody got it.
Both are recorded.
What is written down
| Outcome | Means |
|---|---|
| Assigned | A rule matched and named this person. It says which rule. |
| Over threshold | Somebody matched, but everybody eligible was at their cap. It says whose cap and what it was. |
| No rule matched | Nothing covered this record, so it kept the owner it would have had. |
| Default owner | It went to the named fallback. |
Reading the middle two
These are the ones worth watching, because they are the two ways a lead ends up somewhere nobody intended.
- A run of over threshold means your caps are lower than your lead volume. Either raise them or add people.
- A run of no rule matched means the rules do not cover a kind of enquiry you are actually getting — often a new source or a new city.
Both look identical from the outside: leads sitting with somebody unexpected. Only the record of the decision tells you which of the two problems you have, and they need opposite fixes.
When it did nothing at all
If a record was created with an owner named explicitly, no rule ran — that is by design, and there is nothing to explain. Rules govern the records where nobody said.
What a manager should look at weekly
- Are records still being assigned, or has something stopped matching?
- How often is the default owner catching overflow? Occasionally is healthy; daily is not.
- Is any one person showing up far more than the others despite the rotation? That usually means everybody else is at a cap.
The two things that look the same and are not
| Symptom | Could be | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Leads piling up with the manager | Over threshold — the team is full | Raise the caps, or add people. |
| Leads piling up with the manager | No rule matched — nothing covers them | Add an entry for that source or region. |
Identical from the outside, opposite fixes. Raising the caps when the real problem is an uncovered source changes nothing at all, and it is the commonest wasted afternoon with a feature like this.
A catch-all entry at the bottom of your last rule — every record, to the sales role — means no rule matched should never happen. If it still does, something is creating records in a module you have not written rules for.
Where to go next
Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.