Reassign Leads using the Assignment Rules AFTER you've already uploaded them

Ever have a bunch of leads to import to salesforce, but you don't want your reps to get their grubby little paws on them yet? Maybe you have more information you want to be able to add to the leads before the reps get them, such as some notes you'd like to add so that all the information about the lead is complete. I commonly need to upload a list of tradeshow leads, but then I need to separately append Notes to the leads (Notes are a separate object and thus you can't import the Notes at the same time you import the leads). So, I need to upload my leads first, prevent my reps from seeing them, and then do some separate work on the leads. Once I'm ready, I want to re-assign the leads to the reps, but, since my assignment rules are complex, I want to leverage them instead of reassigning the leads through the reassignment tool, which is more manual.

Here's how you can upload your leads to a temporary owner, like a queue, and then, reassign the leads using your assignement rules. Note that we're not talking about reassigning salesforce leads using their reassignment tool, but instead, we are leveraging our already-built assignment rules to do it for us.



1) Upload your leads with a column called "Record Owner". In that column's cells put "Temp Queue" as the owner (be sure you create an actual queue with that name first). Also, on the Lead Import Wizard, don't select your assignment rules, leave that dropdown box alone.

2) Run a report after the upload and be sure you get the Lead ID to display on the report. Export it to csv.
Now, you've got the Lead ID that identifies your lead. You can make changes to the lead on your spreadsheet, or use that Lead ID to bring in Notes or something else to append to that particular leads' record.

3) After you've done the editing/appending that you wanted to do to the leads, you can re-import them using the assignment rules. Your assignment rules will reassign all the leads to their proper rep. Here's how: For this upload, when you go into the Import Leads Wizard, select your set of assignment rules from the dropdown, and select the bullet for matching by the "Salesforce ID". See the image below:

After your re-import, all your leads will have been properly assigned to your reps with no duplicates created.