Escalation rule in Salesforce

Case escalation rules in Salesforce are used to reassign and optionally notify individuals when a case is not closed within a specified time.

Generic use cases for the escalation rule:

1. If Tier 1 agent is unable to close the case in a specific amount of time the case will automatically get assign to Tier 2 Team
2. To notify the management if the high priority cases are still open after a specific amount of time.

Setting up an escalation rule in Salesforce

1. Go to setup
2. Search for escalation rules
3. Click New, enter a name, click Active and Save

   NOTE: At any point in time there can be only one active case escalation rule. So, if an active rule already exists and you create a new active rule, that new rule will become active while the previous rule is deactivated.

4. Once you create the rule, you can create multiple entries for that rule:
   • Sort order, which determines the order of evaluation of rule entries; select the criteria for the rule entry
   • Entry criteria, which determines through which rule entry the case is eligible for escalation

   You’ll see two options here:

   1. Criteria are met. Choose “criteria are met” and select the filter criteria that a record must meet to trigger the rule.

      For example, set a case filter to priority equals high if you want case records with the priority field marked high to trigger the rule.

      If your organization uses multiple languages, enter filter values in your organization’s default language. You can add up to 25 filter criteria, each of which is up to 255 characters.

      When you use picklists to specify filter criteria, the selected values are stored in the organization’s default language.

      If you edit or clone existing filter criteria, first set the default language on the company information page to the same language used to set the original filter criteria. Otherwise, the filter criteria may not be evaluated as expected.

   2. Formula evaluates to true. Choose “formula evaluates to true” and enter a formula that returns a value of true or false. Salesforce triggers the rule if the formula returns true.

Business hours criteria

You can now specify the business hours criteria for this escalation rule. These details denote the hours when the support team is available to serve customers, making the escalation process more accurate. Business hours also help organizations set the working hours of support teams at different locations and in different time zones, which makes it easier to calculate case-related time.

To ignore business hours:

• Use the business hours specified on the use case
• Select business hours; if you created custom business hours, you can use that info here

Specify how escalation times are set

• When you create the use case, the rule calculates the age over time from the created date/time of the case.
• When you create the use case and disable it after the case is first modified, the rule doesn’t escalate the case if the record is modified after creation and the age over time is calculated according to created date/time.
• Based on the last modification, the rule calculates the age over time from the last modified date/time of the case.

For example, a sample Account has a Picklist field called Support level. That field has three values: Premium Plus, Premium and Standard.

If a case is created for an Account that has a Premium Plus support level and it isn’t closed in the first six business hours, then the case should be escalated to the Tier 2 Support queue. For the premium and standard levels, the support the windows are 24 and 48 hours, respectively.

So:

1. Go to Setup Search for Escalation Rules
2. Click on new name the Rule Tier 2 Support
3. In Rule entries section, click New and fill in the details below:
   1. Sort Order = 1
   2. Run this rule if the = Criteria are met (Account: Support Level equal Premium Plus)
   3. Set business hours = Default
4. Specify how escalation time is set = case is created
5. Click Save
6. In the escalation actions, click New
7. Specify the time criteria for this rule: Age over 6 hours 0 minutes
8. Auto Assign cases (queue = “Tier 2 Support” )
9. Do the same for the remaining two support level values
10. Test the escalation rule
    1. Create a case for an account where Support level is Premium Plus
    2. Go to setup type escalation, under monitoring click case escalations
    3. Add filter criteria by rule name.

NOTE: When salesforce.com triggers an escalation rule, its time-dependent actions are placed in the case escalation queue.

You’ll see a list of all the cases that meet the escalation rule’s criteria, as well as when they were created and when they’ll be escalated.

Now, go back to the cases marked closed and back to monitoring. There shouldn’t be any cases available because once the status is closed, the case exists outside of the escalation queue.

— By Rishabh Dubey