Overview of the Territory Index Tool

The Territory Index tool builds a polygon adjacency index for the alignment layer. The adjacency index is automatically used by the Create Territories from Seed Points, Create Territories from Centers of Density, and Balance Territories commands.

The Territory Design Build Index tool creates an optimized adjacency index for polygonal features. The index works by searching for surrounding features in the alignment layer and saves their feature ID and the adjacent feature IDs in the index. The index is then used to quickly grow territories when the territories must be contiguous and no holes in territories check boxes are checked. In simpler terms, each alignment layer polygon instantly understands which polygons are nearby and can build territories rapidly because processing intensive topology checks are no longer needed.

The index is filled automatically while creating from locations or balancing territories and stored in a Territory Solution Layer, so re-creation or rebalancing of territories in the same place will run faster in any case. Prebuilding of an adjacent index can be useful in the next cases:

• If you want to perform multiple iterations of balancing in different areas of geography. It may be helpful to build the index first, which may involve some initial processing time, then try different balancing options at different geographic areas. The balancing should process much faster.
• When an index is saved to a file, it can be helpful when multiple territory solutions are based on one alignment layer. Since the index is coupled with the alignment layer, all corresponding territory solutions will share the index.

Its not necessary to build the Territory Index if you do not plan to adjust the balancing, create options or plan to create territories manually and not use Balancing Index variable.

The Refresh Territory Design layer command will reset the index.