Shouldn't accounts automatically be assigned to territories when created/edited if rules match?

Question

We have been using Territory Management 2.0 for about a year now. I was under the impression that when accounts are created or subsequently edited to meet the territory assignment rule criteria, the account would be assigned to the territory automatically. However, I must manually run the territory assignment rules in order to get the territory assigned to edited accounts.

Am I right in expecting that Salesforce should automatically assign territories to accounts when they meet the territory assignment rule criteria? Or, is it required to constantly run the assignment rules manually to keep accounts properly aligned to their territories?

If the rules must be manually ran, is there a way to schedule this step?

Answer 1

As it turns out, one must set the Default checkbox on the account page layout properties if you want Salesforce to re-evaluate territory assignment rules when you edit an account:

By default, this checkbox is not checked (at least in our org). Checking this option and saving the page layout solved my problem.

As a side note, deploying the page layout results in the target org's Default setting becoming unchecked, regardless if it was checked in the source page layout. Salesforce support told me this was "expected behavior", although I can't imagine anyone wanting this "feature".