Support milestones on entitlement processes
Key Takeaway
A master milestone reaches records only through an entitlement process. Add the milestone to an entitlement process and apply that process to a customer entitlement. Records linked to that entitlement then get the milestones.
Milestones are required, time-dependent steps in a support process, such as first response time or case resolution time. You create a milestone once and then add it to entitlement processes. In each process, you set how long reps have, which records the milestone applies to, and what happens as the deadline gets close. When a case, work order, or incident is linked to an entitlement that has an entitlement process, those milestones start counting down on the record.
How a milestone reaches a record
Milestones can be used on cases, work orders, and incidents. Getting a milestone onto one of those records takes three layers of setup.
- Create a master milestone.
- Add the master milestone to an entitlement process.
- Apply that entitlement process to a customer entitlement.
When a support record is linked to the entitlement, Salesforce applies the process and its milestones to the record automatically. The milestones then start counting down on the record.
Creating the master milestone alone does nothing to cases, because a milestone can't be applied to a record by itself. A milestone reaches a record only through an entitlement process.
Dana is the admin for a printer repair company. She creates a master milestone named First Response Time. At this point, no case has the milestone. She adds the milestone to an entitlement process called Standard Support and gives reps 4 hours to respond. Next, she applies Standard Support to the entitlement for Lakeside Clinic, one of her customers. A rep then links a new Lakeside Clinic case to that entitlement. Salesforce applies Standard Support and its First Response Time milestone to the case, and the 4-hour countdown starts.