Building an entitlement process is a multi-step configuration: enable the feature, design the process, attach milestones, configure stopped statuses, attach to entitlements, and validate against real cases.
- Enable Entitlement Management
Setup, Entitlement Settings, Enable Entitlement Management. Also enable Auto-Population and confirm the Case page layout shows the Entitlement field and the Case Milestones related list.
- Configure business hours profiles
Setup, Business Hours, New. Build one profile per region or support tier (US Business Hours 9-5 EST, EU Business Hours 9-5 CET, 24x7 Premium Support). Add holidays for the region. Without correct business hours, SLA clocks measure wrong.
- Create the entitlement process
Setup, Entitlement Processes, New. Give it a name (Standard Support Process), pick the Case Entry Criteria (formula that decides which cases the process runs on), set Business Hours, set Stopped Statuses.
- Define milestone types
Setup, Milestone Types, New. Create entries like First Response, Resolution Time, Customer Update. These are reusable across processes. Each milestone type is the unit of tracking.
- Attach milestones to the process
Inside the entitlement process, Add Milestone. Pick the milestone type, set the Trigger Time (minutes), set the Business Hours profile (can override the process default), and order the milestones in sequence.
- Configure milestone time triggers
For each milestone, add Warning, Violation, and Success time triggers. Each trigger has an offset (minutes before or after the target) and a set of workflow actions (email alert, task, field update).
- Attach the process to entitlements and test
Open an entitlement record, set the Entitlement Process field to the new process, then create a test case. Confirm the case auto-populates the entitlement, the milestones appear in the related list, and the timer starts.
Formula that decides which cases the process applies to. Defaults to all cases on the entitlement. Refine with Type, Priority, or RecordType filters.
Profile that determines how elapsed time is measured. Overridable per milestone. Wrong profile is the single biggest SLA setup mistake.
List of case statuses that pause the SLA clock. Typically Waiting on Customer, On Hold. Without these, the clock counts customer response time toward the SLA.
Action that fires at a milestone offset. Supports warning, violation, and success offsets with workflow actions per trigger.
Reusable definition of an SLA target. Created once, attached to many processes. Examples: First Response, Resolution, Escalation Notification.
- Cases must be matched to an entitlement for the process to run. Without auto-population or a Flow to set the entitlement, the SLA clock never starts.
- Business hours profiles must include holidays for the region. A missing holiday means the SLA clock runs through Christmas Day, generating false violations and angering customers.
- Time Trigger actions reference workflow actions, which are deprecated in favor of Flow. Migrate triggers to Flow-based actions for any new entitlement process built today.
- Changing the entitlement process on an in-flight case does not retroactively change milestones already created. The new process applies to future milestones only.
- The Entitlement Process Designer UI is older and can be slow with large milestone sets. Use the Tooling API or Metadata API for bulk edits.