Escalation Rule In Salesforce

Author: Rishabh Dubey

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

Generic Use cases for 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 Escalation Rule in Salesforce.

1. Go to setup
2. Search for escalation rules
3. Click on new, Enter name click on Active and save

Note : At any Point of time there can be only one active Case Escalation Rule, So if there is already an active rule and you create a new active rule, the new rule will be active and the previous rule will be deactivated)

4. Once the rule is created you can create multiple entries for the rule. You will find below sections in Rule entry

1. Sort Order : Sort Order which determines the order of evaluation of rule entries.
2. Select the criteria for the rule entry

Entry criteria which determines that through which rule entry the case is eligible for escalation

You will get 2 option 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, of up to 255 characters each. 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 that was 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.”

C. Specify the business hours criteria for this escalation rule :It specifies the hours on which the support team is available to serve customers. It makes the escalation process more accurate. Business hours help organizations set the working time of support teams of different locations and different time zones which makes it easy to calculate the time related to cases.

1. Ignore business hours
2. Use business hours specified on the case
3. Select business hours : If you have created custom business hours that can be used here

D. Specify how escalation times are set

1. When the case was created : calculates the age over time from the created date/time of the case.
2. When the case was created and disable after the case is first modified : does not escalate the case if the case record is modified after creation and the Age Over time is calculated according to created date/time.
3. Based on last modification : calculates the age over time from the last modified date/time of case.

Example: 

Requirement  :  On Account we have a Picklist field called Support level and the field has 3 values, Premium Plus, Premium and Standard.

IF a case is created for an Account that has Premium Plus support level and is not closed in the first 6 business hours then the case should be escalated to “Tier 2 Support” queue, For premium and Standard support the window is 24 and 48 hours.

Step 1. Go to Setup Search for “Escalation Rules”

Step 2. Click on new name the Rule “Tier 2 Support”

Step 3. In Rule entries Section click on new fill below details

1. Sort Order =1
2. Rune 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 on save
6. In escalation actions click on 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 remaining 2 support level values

10. Test the escalation rule

Step 1. Create a case for an account where Support level is Premium Plus

Step 2. Go to setup type escalation, under monitoring click case escalations

Step 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)

Step 4. You will see list of all the case those are meeting the criteria of escalation rule, when they have been created and when they will be escalated

Step 5. Go back to the case mark case as closed and again come back to monitoring, there will be no case available, because once the status is closed the case exists out from the escalation queue.