How to use entitlements and milestones to meet service level agreements (SLAs)

  • April 19, 2022

An entitlement is a unit of customer support in Salesforce, typically used to represent terms in service agreements.

Entitlement records will help your service reps see what types of support the customer is eligible for.

For example, all accounts are eligible for standard support. Accounts that pay an extra $99 each month are eligible for premium support. Accounts that pay an extra $199 each month are eligible for premium plus support.

Entitlement records have a lookup field for the entitlement process. (The entitlement process will determine the milestone the service reps need to follow on a case.)

Milestones are major steps in your support process that sales reps need to follow in a timely manner. Consider these milestones as service line agreements. Milestones can be defined with a countdown to ensure certain key steps in the support process are met in a timely manner.

For example, the customer with standard support will get the first response in two days and a resolution in seven days. The customer with premium support will get the first response in one day and a resolution in five days. The customer with premium plus support will get the first response in six hours and a resolution time in three days.

Entitlement process

Entitlement processes are timelines that include all the steps (or milestones) that your support team must complete to resolve cases.

It’s important to note that entitlements can be independent from milestones, but milestones require an entitlement process. You can have entitlements enabled without an entitlement process with milestones.

Setting up entitlements and milestones in Salesforce

  1. Go to set up search for entitlement settings and click on enable entitlement management to enable entitlement.
  2. Add entitlement-related list on account layouts
    1. Go to object manager
    2. Account
    3. Page layouts
    4. Click on account layout and add the entitlement-related list on the account layout.
  3. Adjust field-level security (FLS) for entitlement name, entitlement process end time, entitlement process start time fields on case object and add these fields to case layout.
  4. Create milestones
    1. Go to set up search for milestones and click on new milestone.
    2. Name = First response to customer
    3. Description = “Optional”
    4. Recurrence type = No Recurrence
      1. No recurrence: The milestone only occurs once on the support record.
      2. Independent: The milestone occurs whenever the milestone criteria match the record criteria.
      3. Sequential: The milestone occurs on repeat whenever the milestone criteria match the record criteria
    5. Do the same for Case resolution
  5. Create three entitlement processes, one for each type of support plan.
    1. Go to set up.
    2. Search for the entitlement process and click on new entitlement process.
    3. Entitlement process type = case
    4. Entitlement process name = Premium Plus
    5. Active = true
    6. Case enters the process = based on case created date
    7. Case exits the process = based on when a case is closed
    8. Business hours = Default
  6. Add milestone to entitlement process
    1. Click on new under milestone section of the entitlement process.
    2. Milestone name = First response to the customer
    3. Time trigger minutes = 360 (6 hours)
    4. Start Time = entitlement process
    5. Business hour = default
    6. Order = 1 click on save
    7. Click on save
    8. Add another milestone
    9. Milestone name = Close case
    10. Time trigger minutes = 4320 (72 hours)
    11. Start Time = entitlement process
    12. Business hour = default
    13. Order = 2
    14. Click on save
  7. Click on the milestone name to add success, warning and violation action. All workflow actions are available here.
  8. Create the entitlement process for premium and standard support.
  9. Create entitlement record for the accounts.
    1. Go to the entitlement-related list on account and click on new.
    2. Since this account is eligible for premium plus support, we’ll add premium plus entitlement process in the entitlement process lookup field.
  10. Create a case from entitlement.
    1. Click New on Case related list on Entitlement

Once the case is created, you’ll see the milestone clock running on the milestone component. If the component isn’t added to the record page, add the component to the record page.

Once the service rep marks this milestone as complete, the second milestone (close case) will kick in.

Note: We can create automations that will automatically mark these milestones as complete when reps perform certain steps.

Note: Instead of creating a case from an entitlement-related list, we can create an automation that will automatically update the entitlement name field on cases with the correct entitlement from related cases.

— By Rishabh Dubey