Create and manage inbound opportunities routing rules

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Appropriate roles: Referrals admin | Referrals user

Important

Creating routing rules is optional. It is only recommended for bigger companies with presence across the world or if your company has a complex Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) hierarchy where referral management is to be done at a specific location level based on the customer markets and solutions.

Introduction

The functionality described in this document will help your company to configure rules, which can help route the Co-sell opportunities sent by Microsoft sellers to the MPN locations of your choice. By default, the referrals from Microsoft seller will be sent to the MPN location associated with the Co-sell solution included in the opportunity. The routing rules if created will help your company override the default routing. Only referral admin with the entire organization scope can create and edit routing rules. Partners with referral user role can only view the routing rules to understand how referrals are getting routed within their company.

The rules will not be applied retrospectively. Any referrals created in the past or with an older configuration of the routing rule will not be updated. Any changes made to the rules are applicable instantaneously.

There are three main pivots for any rule.

  • Customer market - The market where the customer company is located

  • Solution - solutions published by your company either through the OCP GTM portal or commercial marketplace

  • MPN location - the MPN location to which the referral is to be routed

Each rule can be read like - For the referrals sent by Microsoft sellers with the solutions from my company, route them to this MPN location

Note

Inbound routing rules are applicable only for Co-sell opportunities sent by Microsoft sellers to your company.

You can create routing rules in the Referrals tab under Account settings page. To go to the page, select the settings icon next to the user icon on the top-right corner and then select the Referrals tab in the left navigation panel.

Initial setup

Configuring routing rules is not mandatory. If your company decides to use the routing rules to take advantage of the routing logic, you can start by importing the default rules that the referral management system uses to route the referrals. The current logic uses the MPN ID associated with the solution to route all the inbound referrals from Microsoft sellers irrespective of the customer country. They are available for your reference and can be imported with one click as routing rules. Once the import action is completed, the rules will be applied for all the new referrals sent by Microsoft sellers. Your company can edit or delete existing rules and create new rules if necessary. Only referral admin with the global scope can import the rules. The same permission is required for any subsequent changes to the routing rules.

Important

There are changes to the email notification logic. As soon as the rules have been imported, the emails that were earlier sent to solution contacts uploaded in the Co-sell tab in the commercial marketplace will not longer be sent. Only referral admins of the MPN location to which the co-sell opportunity is sent will be notified.

Override rules

You can override two types of rules and override a specific condition of the default rule. In the default rule, you can only change the MPN location to which the referrals are to be routed. The other two rule types that you can override are those with All solutions and All markets as conditions in the rules.

All markets override - Assuming you created a rule that says, for all the customer markets and a given solution A, route the referrals to MPN location M1. You can override such rule with a specific market and the same solution combination. Example override can be "for the referrals containing customers from the market United Kingdom and solution A, route it to MPN location M2.

All solutions override - Assuming you created a rule that says, for all the solutions and a given market MKT1, route the referrals to MPN location M1. You can override such rule with a specific solution and the same market combination. Example override can be "for the referrals containing customers from the market MKT1 and solution B, route it to MPN location M2.

Below table shows the summary of types of solutions that you can override

Type Can you override ?
Default No
All markets Yes
All solutions Yes
A specific solutions and specific markets combination No

Note

You can change the MPN location for the default rule even though you cannot change anything else in that rule.

Rules evaluation

If your company has multiple rules that can be applied for a scenario, below the evaluation criteria used.

  • The first check will be for a rule with the specific solution and market combination, which are in the inbound opportunity. A direct match to any such rule will take precedence over all other rules.
  • If the first check fails, then we check if there are any rules that contain the solution mentioned in the referral with market condition set as all markets.
  • If the second check fails, then we check if there are any rules where all solutions are mentioned as solution criteria for a specific market.
  • If the third check also fails, then we use the Default rule.

Note

You cannot create a rule which conflicts with other rules at a specific location and solution level. The UI will throw an error with the name of the rule which is conflicting with your configuration if you are try to create a conflicting rule.

Example

Inbound routing rules will be explained with the help of routing rules created for Contoso Corporation. Before understanding how the rules will be applied, let us understand the MPN hierarchy and the user set-up at Contoso Corporation.

MPN hierarchy of Contoso Corporation

MPN ID Type Address
999999 Global One Contoso way, Redmond, United States of America
555555 Location One Contoso way, London, United Kingdom
666666 Location One Contoso way, Singapore, Singapore
777777 Location One Contoso way, Bengaluru, India

Sellers from Contoso Corporation

Below are the sellers with their respective referral roles and scope at Contoso Corporation.

Name Role Scope
Seller One Referral admin Entire Organization
Seller Two Referral admin Bengaluru
Seller Three Referral user London
Seller Four Referral user Singapore

Inbound routing rules for Contoso Corporation

Assume the following set of rules were created by Seller One for Contoso Corporation. Only Seller One can create these rules because referral admin at entire organization scope is required for creating and editing rules.

Markets Solutions MPN location Routing rule name
All markets All solutions Redmond Default
United Kingdom All solutions London UK all solutions
All markets Sol-ABC Singapore Sol-ABC all markets
India Sol-PQR Bengaluru India-Sol-PQR

Summary of routing for various scenarios based on the rules for Contoso Corporation

No Scenario Customer Market Solutions included Routing rule applied MPN assignment Referrals access
1 No specific solution and market rule match United Kingdom SOL-PQR Global 999999 Seller One, Seller Two, Seller Three (if added to the team), Seller Four(if added to the team)
2 All solutions and a specific market rule match United Kingdom SOL-PQR UK all solutions 555555 Seller One, Seller Three (if added to the team)
3 Specific solution and all markets rule match Nigeria SOL-ABC SOL-ABC all markets 666666 Seller One, Seller Four(if added to the team)
4 Specific solution and market rule match India SOL-PQR India-Sol-PQR 777777 Seller One, Seller Two
5 Inbound referral with a solution not owned by your company United States of America SOL-XYZ Global 999999 Seller One, Seller Two, Seller Three (if added to the team), Seller Four(if added to the team)

Next steps