Contents:

• Overview
• Use Cases
• Prerequisites
• Configure Account Hierarchies (Mapping)
• Continuously Updating Hierarchies Built on Custom Objects
• Add the Account Hierarchy Visualization to Salesforce
• Configure Related Record Tabs (Visualization)
• Seeing Orphaned & Whitespace Accounts
• Considerations and Best Practices
• Summary

 

Overview

LeanData Account Hierarchies helps you automatically map, build, and maintain multi-level Account hierarchies using enriched hierarchy data in your CRM (for example, legal relationship data from a data provider). You can configure up to 10 distinct hierarchies in a single LeanData environment, allowing you to model different views of your account data side by side, such as a D&B legal hierarchy alongside a sales territory hierarchy.

This article focuses on:

• Building and maintaining hierarchies (mapping).
• Adding and configuring the Salesforce hierarchy visualization.

A separate article covers using the Account Hierarchy Match Node in FlowBuilder.

 

Use Cases

LeanData Account Hierarchies can help you:

• Understand complex enterprise account structures before outreach.
• Support territory planning and coverage reviews across subsidiaries.
• Improve operational visibility by viewing key related records (such as Contacts, Opportunities, or Cases) across an entire hierarchy.
• Identify potential whitespace or gaps in hierarchy data, depending on your enrichment provider and configuration.
• Maintain and toggle between multiple hierarchy models (such as legal, sales territory, or domain) without duplicating account data.

 

Prerequisites

Before you begin, confirm the following:

• Your org has enriched hierarchy data available (for example, a unique company identifier and a parent identifier).
• You have admin access to configure LeanData, and access to update Salesforce Account page layouts.

 

Configure Account Hierarchies (Mapping)

LeanData supports up to 10 account hierarchies. Each hierarchy is configured, built, and maintained independently so you can model different views of your account data side by side. You must build a hierarchy before it can be visualized or referenced in a routing graph.

Create or Edit a Hierarchy

1. In the LeanData app, navigate to Routing > Account Hierarchies. Existing hierarchies are listed on this page. Drag hierarchies in the list to change their order. The order set here determines the order of appearance in the Account Hierarchy Visualization selector and the Account Hierarchy Match Node menus, so place the hierarchies that should appear first at the top of the list.

   

2. To create a new hierarchy, click Create Hierarchy. To modify an existing hierarchy, click into it from the list.

3. In the Configuration Tab > Settings section, enter a Name that identifies the hierarchy (for example, "D&B Legal Hierarchy" or "Sales Territory Hierarchy"). Optionally, add a Description that captures the purpose or criteria of the hierarchy.

   

4. In the Hierarchy Data Mapping section, choose the object where the enrichment data lives.

   • Example: Account or a provider object (such as a D&B company profile object).

   

5. Under Field Mapping, select the fields used to build the hierarchy.

   • Choose the field that contains the company's unique identifier (sometimes called "Self ID").
   • Choose the field that contains the parent company identifier (sometimes called "Parent ID").

   

6. (Optional) If you wish to use the Whitespace Discovery feature to find Accounts that do not currently exist in your CRM, toggle this option on for the hierarchy.

   

   • Whitespace Discovery is configured per hierarchy and requires that you connect LeanData with an enrichment provider.
   • For more information, please see the Account Hierarchies - Whitespace Discovery Guide.

7. (Optional) Enable the Write to Parent Account Field setting to update the standard Salesforce Parent Account field.

   

   • This setting is useful if you want Salesforce-native hierarchy behaviors (and other tools) to reference the same parent mapping.
   • If you do not enable it, LeanData can still build and maintain the hierarchy for visualization.

Save Hierarchy

The hierarchy configuration page uses a save banner to confirm changes. When you have unsaved edits, the save banner appears at the top of the page in place of the back-to-hierarchies breadcrumb.

• The Save Hierarchy button is disabled until you make a change.
• To exit the hierarchy editor without saving, click Close.

Build a Hierarchy

After Creating your Hierarchy, you will have to build the hierarchy data before it can be used in the visualization.

1. From the main Hierarchy page, click into the hierarchy you want to build.

2. Click Build Hierarchy (or Rebuild Hierarchy) at the top of the page.

   

3. Only one hierarchy can be built at a time. While a build is in progress, the Build button is disabled across all hierarchies until that build finishes.

4. To stop a build that is currently running, open the hierarchy and click Stop. Stopping a build affects only the selected hierarchy and does not stop builds for any other hierarchies.

5. The build may take time to complete, depending on data volume.

6. Review any build warnings or issues.

   • If the configuration page provides an Issues table or warnings (for example, circular references or missing values), address those issues and re-run the build.

Delete a Hierarchy

To delete a hierarchy, click Delete from within the hierarchy page. Deletion is blocked if the hierarchy is currently referenced by one or more Account Hierarchy Match Nodes in a live FlowBuilder graph. When deletion is blocked, a modal displays the following message:

This hierarchy is currently in use by one or more Account Hierarchy Match Nodes in a live FlowBuilder graph. Remove or reconfigure the nodes to delete this hierarchy.

To complete the deletion, open each graph that references the hierarchy, then either remove the Account Hierarchy Match Node or reconfigure it to use a different hierarchy. Once the hierarchy is no longer referenced by any live graph, return to Account Hierarchies and delete it.

 

Continuously Updating Hierarchies Built on Custom Objects

If you are building and maintaining your Account hierarchies on a custom object, LeanData relies on an Apex trigger in your Salesforce org to keep the hierarchy current as records change. You will have to add this trigger to your Salesforce triggers to ensure it can remain up-to-date. Once it is in place, LeanData receives a hierarchy event whenever qualifying records are inserted, updated, or deleted, and the hierarchy updates continuously without a manual rebuild.

Prerequisites

• Your custom object records include a lookup to the Account object.
• The self identifier and parent identifier fields are populated on those records, matching the Field Mapping you configured for the hierarchy.
• You have access to the Salesforce Developer Console and permission to create Apex triggers in your org.

Add the Apex Trigger

1. In Salesforce Setup, open the Developer Console.
2. Click File > New > Apex Trigger.
3. For Name, enter a name for the trigger, such as CustomObjectHierarchyTrigger. You can use any name you prefer.
4. For sObject, select your custom object (for example, DOZISF__ZoomInfo_Id__c).
5. Replace the trigger contents with the following, updating the trigger name and object to match your custom object, then save the trigger:

trigger ZoomInfoHierarchyTrigger on DOZISF__ZoomInfo_Id__c (after insert, after update, before delete) {
    LeanData.LeanDataAPI.triggerHierarchyEvent();
}

After you save the trigger, any records created or updated on the custom object, with the Account lookup and the self and parent fields populated, drive continuous updates to the hierarchy.

Backfilling Records Imported Before the Trigger

The trigger responds only to record changes that occur after it is saved. To pick up records that were imported before you added the trigger, run a one-time rebuild of the hierarchy using Rebuild Hierarchy, as described in Build a Hierarchy above.

 

Add the Account Hierarchy Visualization to Salesforce

You can add the LeanData account hierarchy visualization to Salesforce Account record pages using a Visualforce component.

1. In Salesforce, go to Setup.

2. Navigate to Object Manager → Account.

3. Select Page Layouts.

   

4. Open the Account page layout you want to update.

5. In the page layout editor, select Visualforce Pages.

6. Drag LeanDataAccountHierarchyView onto the layout.

   

7. On the Visualforce Component on the page layout, click the Wrench icon in the upper right to open the Visualforce Page Properties editor.

   • Height (in pixels): 800 (recommended).

     

   • Click OK.

8. In the Page Layout palette at the top at click Save to save your page layout changes.

After saving, the Hierarchy Visualization should appear on this specific account layout. From the visualization, users select which hierarchy to view from the Hierarchy dropdown at the top of the component. The order of hierarchies in the dropdown matches the order configured on the Account Hierarchies General tab.

 

Configure Related Record Tabs (Visualization)

You can configure tabs in the hierarchy visualization to display related records (for example, Contacts or Opportunities) across the entire hierarchy. The Hierarchy View tab displays the name of the hierarchy being configured so you can confirm which hierarchy's related records you are editing.

1. In the LeanData app, navigate to Routing → Account Hierarchies → [Select Hierarchy] → Hierarchy Visualization.

   

2. Click Add Object.

3. Select the object you want to display.

   

   • Common options include Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, Cases, and Tasks.

4. Configure the columns.

   • Choose the fields to display. Give each field a clear label which will display on the visualization.

   • Click Add Field to add more fields.

   • Reorder the fields as needed.

     

5. Configure rollup footers if you wish to calculate and display rollup metrics across hierarchies. These rollups metrics will appear at the bottom of your visualization.

   • Select which field you want to aggregate, an operator for how you wish to aggregate the metrics, and a label for your rollup metric.

     

   • Click Add Rollup to add more Rollup metrics.

6. Configure sorting.

   • If there is a sort order setting, use it to prioritize the most relevant related records.

     

7. Choose a Record Display Limit. LeanData will only display records up to the limit you set here (up to 1000 records).

   

8. Click Save Changes in the upper right of the page.

 

Seeing Orphaned & Whitespace Accounts

To view orphaned Accounts (Accounts without a Parent) or Whitespace Accounts (Accounts in the hierarchy that are missing from your CRM), navigate to the Hierarchy Member Management tab. The Hierarchy Member Management tab displays the hierarchy name alongside the orphaned and whitespace accounts so you can identify which hierarchy the listed accounts belong to.

For more information on Whitespace Accounts, please see the Account Hierarchies - Whitespace Discovery Guide.

 

Considerations and Best Practices

• Validate your enrichment fields before building. A clean, stable unique identifier and parent identifier are key to a reliable hierarchy.
• Permissions affect what users see. The visualization respects Salesforce record visibility and field-level security. If a user cannot access a record, it may be hidden or shown with limited information, depending on the visualization behavior in your release.
• Related record limits may apply. If the visualization limits the total number of rows shown (for example, up to 1,000 records), use your related object configuration and sorting to keep the most relevant records visible.
• Plan your hierarchy mix intentionally. You can configure up to 10 hierarchies. Give each one a clear name and description so admins and end users can quickly understand the purpose of each.
• Order hierarchies for the most common workflow. The order of hierarchies on the General tab drives the order in the Account Hierarchy Visualization selector and the Account Hierarchy Match Node menus. Place the most frequently used hierarchies at the top.
• Confirm references before deleting. Before deleting a hierarchy, confirm it is not referenced by any live FlowBuilder graphs. If it is, remove or reconfigure those Account Hierarchy Match Nodes first.

 

Summary

LeanData Account Hierarchies lets you build and maintain multi-level account structures using enriched hierarchy data, then visualize those hierarchies directly on Salesforce Account records. You can also add related record tabs to support account planning and operational visibility across the entire hierarchy.

For questions or additional assistance, please contact LeanData Support.