How to Instantly Assign Records to the Right Salesforce User With Smart Work Distribution

Instantly assign records to the right user for the job, no matter how complex the workflow.

Highlights

• Automate even the most complex routing workflows without writing a line of code.
• Handle work with speed and responsiveness – set SLAs and auto-reassign work automatically when needed.
• Cut the admin time out of deduplicating, matching, and assigning Salesforce records.
• Ensure a fair and balanced workload across teams, considering each reps’ characteristics.

There are few things more damaging to a customer relationship than an unhandled contact request. Whether we’re talking about sales, support, or logistics, speed is king. No customer wants to wait forever for a response, which is why first responders have the upper hand in winning deals and reducing churn.

Clunky routing and assignment processes put you at an unnecessary competitive disadvantage. Investing in proper work distribution makes everyone happier, including your customers, admins, salespeople, and service agents. Effective distribution boosts your conversion rates with minimal overhead – the perfect win-win.

Salesforce has plenty of features to power your business processes. Unfortunately, work distribution isn’t one of them. Whether you call it distribution, assignment, or routing, it’s a task few admins are enthusiastic about. Work distribution is one of those processes where no one pays attention to it when it works, but when it fails, chaos ensues.

And it doesn’t help that the out-of-the-box Lead and Case Assignment Rules have severe limitations, forcing businesses to build complex Flows and Custom Metadata to apply their assignment logic.

I recently tried out an AppExchange staple, one of the first work distribution solutions with a stellar 13-year track record. In this article, we dive into the challenges of work distribution and how Distribution Engine tackles them.

Features

Effortless. That’s the best way to describe when work distribution is done right. Work distribution isn’t just about lead routing – it should cover all customer-facing work that needs handling with responsiveness and focus. Salesforce’s built-in Lead and Case Assignment Rules don’t cover Accounts, Opportunities, Tasks, or custom objects. For those, you need an app like Distribution Engine.

Teams across sales, service, marketing, and revenue operations use Distribution Engine. It serves hundreds of customers globally, ranging from startups to established enterprises in education, technology, financial services, and healthcare. Their customers typically have between 50 and 1500 employees, with several sales or service teams, high work volumes, and the need for very fast response times.

As the name implies, Distribution Engine is a tool for distributing records to users. It is a dedicated point solution in the best possible sense; it doesn’t try to solve all your woes but excels at the job it was meant for. It helps you automate even the most complex workflows without writing a single line of code. All its features are purpose-built to handle complexity without complicating things for the user. Next, we explore these in detail.

Distribute Any Object to a User

One thing I enjoyed about Distribution Engine is that it works just as well for Cases and Leads as it does for custom objects. If your business needs a record routed and assigned to a user, Distribution Engine can handle it. Say you want to rotate Account ownership or have SDRs create Opportunities to be assigned to AEs – Distribution Engine has got you covered. This versatility makes the investment more worthwhile and gives all your customer-facing teams an edge, not just sales or support.

Distribution Engine uses its feature, Distribution Teams, to determine who to assign to each record. These teams are independent from standard Salesforce role hierarchies and public groups, and are used only for record distribution purposes. You can safely modify your Distribution Teams without affecting record sharing or other configurations. 

I was initially on the fence about this one, as I saw it as yet another user group layer to manage. However, Distribution Teams have a subtle but essential distinction. Where public groups and role hierarchies require admin and architect involvement, sales and service leaders can independently adjust Distribution Teams. This gives teams much-needed agility and frees up admins to focus on other tasks.

Distribution Engine’s routing rules and logic are defined using Distributors. Distributors can use round robin to route records across teams, or load balancing to ensure all users have a manageable workload. In addition, records can be assigned automatically to their current or dynamic owner based on a field value. 

You can choose from four options for record routing:

• Standard distributors: Runs assignments on a schedule and pushes records to users based on the defined assignment logic. The standard choice with the most versatility.
• Trigger distributors: Runs assignments in near real time based on a trigger, making it faster than a standard distributor, but prone to hitting governor limits and with fewer options, e.g. no retry capability.
• Manual distributors: Allows team managers to assign records manually to team members from a record detail component.
• Pull distributors: Allows users to define when they want to receive work. They can pull records for themselves using the Distribution Engine widget in any Lightning app.

In routing, speed is everything, and sitting on your Cases and Leads is a recipe for failure. Distribution Engine upholds your SLAs by redistributing records before they expire. With Auto Reassign, records are reassigned from team members who fail to meet SLAs, either back into a queue or to a designated user. Additionally, it can update fields such as status during reassignment. It also tracks up to the last 50 assignees to prevent circling back to the same user.

Classify Records Before Distribution

Not all work is created equal; some records may require days’ worth of preparation and specialized expertise, while others are a piece of cake. To account for these differences, Distribution Engine gives you several ways to classify and categorise records.

One option is to use Territory Classification. Territories are a simple way of distributing work geographically. You set these custom geographical areas within the application to classify records.

Another way is to use Custom Classification as a basis for work distribution. This is done by stamping inbound records with tags, using a rule-based logic. For example, you could stamp Opportunities based on relative importance, urgency, and area of expertise required. A record can have several active stamps, but they are ordered in a way that Distribution Engine knows how to prioritize routing.

Distribution Engine also offers ways to handle Salesforce Leads in particular. It builds upon Salesforce’s standard Matching Rules to provide more functionality for Lead-to-X matching. Leads can also be auto-converted or deduplicated based on predefined rules. This can be used alongside Lead Matching to convert if a matching record is found, or if you want to bypass Leads entirely and work with Opportunities instead.

Simulate and Debug Distribution

Distribution Engine has an elegant tool for testing: Assignment Simulator. I found this tool similar to the debug option in Flow Builder. Assignment Simulator also allows you to set test variables and see how the logic behaves for those records. Both have an easy, visual interface for simulating outcomes.

The difference is that Assignment Simulator considers every configuration element within Distribution Engine. This makes it a powerful tool, capable of identifying oversights and contradictory rules. As your distribution logic unavoidably becomes more complex over time, continuous testing goes a long way in preventing misrouted work.

Monitor and Analyze Routing Volumes

Building a shared dashboard for combining lead and case routing isn’t easy using out-of-the-box Salesforce reports. This is where Distribution Engine comes in with its purpose-built reports and analytics. As a 100% native Salesforce app, you can use the platform’s reporting features to give you real-time visibility over your distributed work.

The Distribution Engine Dashboard includes several prebuilt charts that visualize work distribution volumes and handling times. The dashboard shows the total volume of distribution across teams and breaks down distribution counts for each team.

Roadmap

AI has already had a big impact on the RevOps tech stack. Whether inbound inquiries come from traditional sources or AI-driven agents, like chatbots and AI SDRs, Distribution Engine’s rules-based intelligence continues to ensure seamless origination, routing, and assignment within Salesforce.

Beyond this, NC Squared are actively working on native AI capabilities as part of Distribution Engine’s roadmap. They’ve also recently launched a smart meeting scheduling tool called Booking Engine, helping Sales and Support Teams instantly check their team’s availability, find the right rep, and convert customer calls into meetings on the spot – all within Salesforce.

Use Cases

Effective work distribution ensures hard-earned Leads remain active and prevents customer complaints due to delayed Case handling. Distribution Engine differs from its competition by being an all-around work distribution solution rather than focusing only on sales leads. In fact, over 30 percent of its users use the tool for routing Cases as well as other objects. 

Automated distribution is an underutilized efficiency booster, enhancing productivity on objects such as Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Tasks. Automating work distribution in this way allows companies to ensure work is done by the right people, SLAs are respected, and time is used as effectively as possible.

Skill-Based Object Routing

In an ideal world, your team members should be able to handle any user request that comes up. However, with a complex product portfolio or different vertical markets, it’s often more efficient to have specialized agents. Distribution Engine can tag your team members with primary and secondary skills, indicating their competence in various areas.

When a lead or case arrives, the system first attempts to assign it to an agent with a primary skill match. If none are available, it looks for an agent with a secondary skill match. As a last resort, the object is assigned to any available agent regardless. This method ensures that work is distributed to the most qualified team members whenever possible.

Pairing Contacts With SDRs

Enterprises typically have dedicated account executives (AEs) for large VIP customers. These customers get inbound “leads” originating from marketing campaigns that are handled by sales development representatives (SDRs) who work across several Accounts. This means that Contacts need to be managed independently from Account ownership.

Distribution Engine makes it possible to pair SDRs with account executives by using Salesforce formula fields, Tags, and Distribution Teams. A formula field on the Contact object captures the AE for each Contact, then the AE names are added as tags to SDRs, and finally, a Distributor assigns Contacts based on matching AE names.

Criteria-Based Lead Capping

Work distribution isn’t only about efficiency – it’s also about fairness. Unequal distribution can quickly erode team morale and collaboration, whether it’s assigning some team members a disproportionate share of hot leads or overburdening experienced salespeople with work. Luckily, this can easily be fixed with automated lead weighting and caps.

Distribution Engine allows businesses to control the maximum number of different lead types (e.g. hot, warm, cold) assigned to a user at any given time. For example, a user might simultaneously be capped at two new hot leads, five new warm leads, and ten new cold leads. When a lead’s status changes or is reassigned, the system can distribute new leads accordingly.

Setup

Distribution Engine has a straightforward installation process that starts by getting the app via AppExchange. The app requires Salesforce Enterprise Edition or higher and can be installed in a production or sandbox environment. After installation, the Distribution Engine appears in the App Launcher and is ready for configuration.

All customers start with a free trial, which the NC Squared team can upgrade to a full license. Licenses are needed for team members and managers. Essentially, anyone involved in work distribution will need their license. With the three permission sets (Admin, Team Manager, User), Distribution Engine teams can handle their distributed records and optionally access features like the Lightning Widget and Distribution Logs.

What is great about this setup is that teams have autonomy to adjust their workflows without involving busy Salesforce Admins, and admins can rest easy knowing end-users won’t break any Salesforce configurations. Ideally, an admin is needed only in the rare cases where you need changes in setup pages. Mostly, Distribution Engine is a self-contained system that requires very little external maintenance.

Support

RevOps isn’t easy. Teams have complex needs that shift with the market, and having an expert on hand to help you is key to ensuring success. This, it seems, is a big contributor to Distribution Engine’s ongoing popularity. Looking at the app’s reviews, most comments talk about how engaged and devoted their support staff is.

NC Squared prioritizes customer success, offering comprehensive support for Distribution Engine both in person and online. On their help site, users can access frequently asked questions, release notes, and detailed articles on topics like custom classification and license assignment. Most articles include screenshots and step-by-step instructions.

NC Squared provides all customers with a dedicated customer success team. Premier support customers have dedicated phone support during business hours, while all users can reach out via email for help. Additionally, the Learning Lab offers free onboarding resources, including video tutorials and guides. For more complex issues, users may be asked to grant login access to their Salesforce org, allowing NC Squared’s engineers to diagnose and resolve problems efficiently

Pricing

NC Squared offers three different pricing tiers for its Distribution Engine, all of which include free trials:

• The Starter plan is $20 per user per month.
• The Advanced plan is $35 per user per month.
• The Unlimited plan is $55 per user per month.

The purchasing process begins by requesting a quote, accepting it, and providing payment details. Licenses are activated upon acceptance. Users can add licenses anytime, prorated to the next contract renewal date.

For in-depth guidance on payment methods and license management, refer to their Purchasing FAQs.

Summary

While work distribution is one of Salesforce’s core functions, its standard features often fall short when faced with complexity. NC Squared’s Distribution Engine addresses this gap with advanced routing capabilities for any Salesforce object.

Unlike other tools that focus solely on Leads or Cases, Distribution Engine allows you to use one app to automate your whole customer journey, scaling your operations with smart workflow management. As a fully Salesforce-native solution, Distribution Engine handles complex routing requirements for time-critical processes, and with a 13-year history, it has the reliability you need for success.

Sign up for a free trial on the AppExchange to see the solution in action.