In this article, whenever we talk about 'leads' we are referring to any record from any object that you are assigning via Plauti Assign.

Match Rules are what governs whether a lead gets distributed to the Assignees in that Match Group. A few concepts:

• A Match Group with no Match Rules will receive all the leads (unless it is lower priority than another matching Match Group)
• A Match Group can have several Match Rules
• Multiple Match Rules can be evaluated with AND or OR logic - set at the Match Group level
• Custom Match Rule Logic can be specified when 3 or more Match Rules are used e.g. (1 AND (2 OR 3))
• A Match Rule can be created based on fields on the record being assigned (e.g. the Lead) or on parent record fields (e.g. if you are assigning Cases, you could create a Match Rule based on the Account Name).

A common request is can I use custom fields? Yes - the custom fields will automatically be populated in the Field picklist.

Here is an example Match Rule that is set to match leads that have the Leadsource value = 'web'. As this Match Rule belongs to the 'Web Sales Team' Match Group, any matching leads will be distributed to Assignees in that Match Group.

Here is an example showing the selection of a related field: this is a Case Match Rule that references the Industry field on the parent Account record:

Let's have a look at each field in turn

• Active: indicates whether this Match Rule is in use or not.
• Rule Name: It's a good idea to give this a name that describes exactly what this Match Rule is doing
• Field: This is the field on the record that will be evaluated. All fields including custom fields will appear in this picklist. If you select a lookup to another object, then another picklist, Lookup Field, will appear below that lets you select a field from the related object (e.g. Case >> Account.Industry) 
• Apply NOT operator: Use this to reverse the logic. In the first example above, if you checked this box it would match leads that did NOT have a Leadsource = Web.
• Operator: This can be either Equals, Contains, Starts with, Ends with, Greater than, or Less than. Use the 'Greater than' and 'Less than' operators for comparing numerical fields. (Don't see Starts with or Ends with?) 
• Value: This is the value you are comparing to the value of the field you selected in Field. You have several options here.
  • Supply a list using the pipe | symbol. e.g. Using ‘Equals' web|linkedin|hubspot|leadfeeder will match any of those items (it does an OR match on the items in the list).
  • Zip codes can be done this way as well, e.g. 90210|90214|90222|90234...etc. You can fit all the zip codes in Florida in there if you wish!
  • You can use the 'Starts with' operator to match the first two or three digits of a zip code, e.g. 324|325|325 will match any zip code in the north-east counties of Florida.
  • Use the <empty> keyword, including the angle brackets, if you want a match a blank value.
  • If you are matching against Picklist values, use the API Name in the rule for the picklist item you want to match against.

So in this example, the Picklist Values (Tier1, Tier2, Tier3) are what appear on the UI and available for the user to select in the drop down. Usually the Values and the API Name will default to the same thing. If they are different, you need to use the API Name in the Value field as below:

Now let's look at combining Match Rules

Let’s say we have a team of six sales agents who are responsible for Florida leads from a Spanish web form.

For this Match Group we create two Match Rules, one where the State is Florida, and the other specifying the Leadsource as ‘spanish_form’.

To finish off we need to specify whether these two MatchRules are to be evaluated as OR or AND. Click Edit Logic to select an option; clearly in this situation we need to use AND because we are looking for leads that match both rules.

Custom Match Rule Logic

Following through on this example, let's say that there is another source of Spanish-speaking leads, but not necessarily from the Spanish web form. These leads have the Language field set to 'Spanish'.

Now we have three Match Rules and we need to specify custom logic where we want to match leads from Florida, where either the language specified is Spanish, or the leadsource is 'spanish_form'. Select Custom in the ‘Edit Logic’ picklist, and specify the Custom Match Rule Logic: 1 AND (2 OR 3)

Notice that each Match Rule has a Rule Number field. These are the numbers that are used in the Custom Match Rule Logic. So in this case, we would need to specify (1 AND (2 OR 3)) as the logic; where 1 represents Rule Number 1 (State = Florida), 2 represents Rule Number 2 (Leadsource = spanish_form) and 3 represents Rule Number 3 (Language = Spanish).