Drawing a partner’s territory
A territory is the ground one franchise partner covers. Described as a list of postcode districts it can only ever be approximate: a district cannot be split between two partners, and a boundary that follows a river, a ring road or a county line has no postcode that describes it.
So Head Office draws it instead. You outline the area on a map, add a second area where the territory is in two pieces, and FAST refuses a shape that cannot be a boundary and tells you when one partner’s area runs into another’s.
- 1
Open the territory register
Platform admin
Every territory the network has, with the one column the whole job turns on: whether its area has been drawn yet. The register also says whether each territory is in service, and which partner holds it.
Open on the demo ↗ sign-in - 2
Find the ones that still have no area
Platform admin
Territories are mapped a few at a time, so most of the work is knowing what is left to do. Set Coverage to No area yet and the register answers exactly that. Status and In service on or after narrow it further when the network is large.
Open on the demo ↗ sign-in - 3
Create the territory first
Platform admin
A name, a short code of your own, whether it is in service and from when. There is deliberately no map on this form — you save here, and the next screen is the map.
Open on the demo ↗ sign-in - The system does this
- Take you straight to the map once you save, so a territory is never left looking finished when it has no area
- 4
You land on the map
Platform admin
A territory with no area yet opens over the region the network works in, at a zoom you can start from. The fields sit on the left, the map takes the right half, and Save stays at the top of the form so you never scroll away from the map to find it.
- 5
Draw the area
Platform admin
Use the draw tool at the top right of the map: click to place each corner of the boundary, then click the first corner again to close it. Nothing on this screen asks you for coordinates, for a file, or for a mapping term.
- The system does this
- Name every drawing control in plain English — “Add another area”, “Reshape an area”, “Remove an area” — rather than in mapping jargon
- 6
A territory that is not one continuous shape
Platform admin
Plenty of real territories are in two pieces — a valley and the village the other side of it, a town and an outlying estate. Add another area draws the second piece into the same territory. Tavistock is drawn as two.
- 7
An outline that crosses itself is refused
Platform admin
The commonest mistake when a boundary is traced by hand is an outline that loops back over itself. FAST names the area at fault by its number, tells you what is wrong with it in a sentence, and refuses the save. Nothing is written, and the shape stays on the map for you to correct.
- The system does this
- Refuse an area it cannot read, one that is not an area at all, one whose outline does not close, one with fewer than three corners, one that crosses over itself, and one with a corner off the map
- Write nothing at all on a refusal, so a bad boundary can never be stored and quietly cover nothing
- 8
An area that overlaps a neighbour
Platform admin
Two territories covering the same ground is occasionally deliberate and usually an accident, so FAST stops and names the territory you have run into. Either pull the boundary back, or tick the confirmation and say why. The reason is required, and it is what the next person to open this territory will read.
- The system does this
- Name every existing territory the new area runs into, rather than saying only that there is an overlap
- Refuse the save until the overlap is either removed or confirmed with a written reason
- 9
An overlap that is already in force
Platform admin
Open a territory that already overlaps another and a quiet note says so. It is information, not a job: an overlap that was accepted when it was drawn does not have to be confirmed again every time somebody edits the name or a date.
- 10
Say when it is in service, and save
Platform admin
A drawn area is not a live one on its own. Status and the two dates are what put the territory into service, and Save is at the top right of the form. Back on the register the row now reads Area drawn.
Open on the demo ↗ sign-in
Drawing an area does not re-route enquiries on its own. Matching enquiries against the drawn areas is switched on separately, partner by partner, once Head Office is satisfied the boundaries are right. Until it is switched on for a partner, the postcode list that territory already had is still what sends an enquiry to them — which is exactly what lets the mapping be done a few territories at a time, with nothing stopping in the meantime.
This is Head Office work and nobody else’s. Only a platform administrator can open these pages. A franchise partner cannot redraw or extend the area they hold, and cannot see this register.
An undrawn territory is a normal state, not a fault. Nothing warns, nothing breaks, and the register is the only place it shows. That is why the Coverage filter is the one to keep an eye on while the network is being mapped.