Setting goals and deadlines for case resolution

Encourage customer service representatives (CSRs) to resolve cases on time and enforce your service level agreements (SLAs) by setting goals and deadlines for a case type. SLA measurement starts when the case starts and ends when the case finishes. Inform participants or a creator of the case about an elapsed goal or deadline by creating a notification.

For example, if a CSR of an insurance claim request does not resolve the request within a week, the urgency of this case rises and the manager of the CSR receives a notification.

Apart from configuring cases, you can use this procedure to set goals and deadlines for stages and processes.
Tip: To configure advanced options for a goal and deadline, use the service-level agreement (SLA) form. For more information, see Creating a service-level agreement rule.
  1. In the navigation pane of Dev Studio, click Case types, and then click the case type that you want to open.
  2. On the Settings tab, click Goal & deadline.
  3. In the Use Service-level agreement (SLA) list, define the SLA criteria:
    • To define custom criteria, select Custom SLA, and then go to step 4.
    • To reuse criteria from an existing service-level agreement, select Existing SLA, in the auto-complete field, enter the service-level agreement, and then go to step 11.
    • To leave a case without an SLA, select Never, and then go to step 11.
  4. In the Calculate time from the start of section, select a method for calculating your goal and deadline times:
    • To start the calculation when an user creates an instance of your case type, select This case.
    • To start the calculation when the parent of your case type finishes, select Parent case.
    • To start the calculation when the top-level parent of your case type finishes, select Top level case.
  5. In the Goal section, in the Days and HH:MM:SS fields, enter the suggested resolution time for a case.
    For example: To indicate that the goal is a day, 6 hours, and 30 minutes, in the Days field, enter 1, and then, in the HH:MM:SS field, enter 06:30:00.
  6. In the Increase urgency by field, enter a value by which you want to increase the current case urgency when the goal elapses.
  7. Optional: To inform participants or a creator of the case about an elapsed goal or deadline, configure a goal notification:
    1. In the Notify section, the check boxes for the users to whom you want to send the goal notification.
      The system sends emails to these users when the goal for this task elapses.
    2. For Participants, click Manage participants, select the case participants to whom you want to send the notifications, and then click Done.
    3. In the Message subsection, select a message type:
      • To send a standard notification, select Use default message.
      • To compose an email message, select Compose a message.
      • To choose an existing correspondence template for notification emails, select Use correspondence.
  8. In the Deadline section, in the Days and HH:MM:SS fields, enter the required resolution time for a case.
  9. In the Increase urgency by field, enter a value by which you want to increase the current case urgency when the deadline elapses.
  10. Optional: To notify participants of the case about a missed deadline, configure a deadline notification:
    1. In the Notify section, select the check boxes for the users to whom you want to send the deadline notification.
      The system sends emails to these users when the deadline for this assignment elapses.
    2. For Participants, click Manage participants, select the case participants to whom you want to send the notifications, and then click Done.
    3. In the Message subsection, select a message type:
      • To send a standard notification, select Use default message.
      • To compose an email message, select Compose a message.
      • To choose an existing correspondence template for notification emails, select Use correspondence.
  11. Click Save.
Result:  The system stores your settings in the pyCaseTypeDefault service-level agreement rule. At run time, you can review the Case Details section of a case to learn how much time remains to meet the goal or deadline.