Enhanced SLA and Entitlements (Part Two)

In a previous post I described how to configure an enhanced SLA within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  (2015 and 2016) This post builds on that to extend to using Entitlements. Hopefully you will find this information useful if you need to us entitlements.

Having a default SLA is great but what-if you have selected customers that require one (or more) SLAs which are specific to them. This post describes how to create additional SLAs and associate with Entitlements for each customer.
An entitlement effectively serves (or can serve) two main purposes;

1. It defines how “much” support a customer is entitled to and if required prevents any cases being created if the customer allotment has been used.
2. It optionally allows an SLA to be associated with each entitlement, therefore support multiple SLA patterns.

In my example I want to create an entitlement and associated an enhanced level of service for a specific customer. So first of all I created a new SLA. (As shown below.) With my enhanced SLA I need to respond to customer queries within 1 hour and resolve within 8 hours. Hopefully you’re already familiar with how to create an SLA. If not please see my previous post.
Tip: Don’t forget to activate your SLA before trying to create any entitlements that use it.

Having created my SLA I need to create an entitlement for each customer that will receive this enhanced service level. I do this by first navigating to the entitlements section of the Service Management settings in CRM.

Below I give details of the meaning of each field;

Entitlement Information

Field	Explanation
Name	This is simply an “English” description used to describe your entitlement.
Primary Customer	This mandatory field defines which customer is associated with this entitlement. Typically the customer will be an account. Although it is also possible to associate an entitlement with a contact.
Start Date	The start date of the entitlement.
End Date	The end date for the entitlement. Being a mandatory field, if you entitlement is never ending you may need to enter a date well into the future. Although typically an entitlement might run for 12 months, in line with a product guarantee or other contractual agreement.
Restrict based on entitlement terms	This option is significant! You may be creating the entitlement simply to reflect the fact that someone gets an enhanced support arrangement and do not want to cap the amount of support being provided. If this is the case, set this field to “No”. An entry of yes will prevent new cases being created under this entitlement once the allocation has been used.
SLA	Optionally you can link an entitlement to an SLA. So this is how you can offer different levels of service to different customers.
Owner	The owner is typically the person who created or manages the entitlement. It is probably unlikely that you’ll need to change the owner.
Description	If required you can record a detailed description about this entitlement.
Is Default	The “is default” option cannot be set until after the entitlement is saved AND activated. And then you set it from the ribbon bar. One thing to note is that if the entitlement is ever deactivated and updated you may need to set this field again once re-activated. The purpose of this option is to allocate this entitlement to all cases created for the primary customer. If you only have one entitlement per customer it is quite likely you will want to select this option. But if you operate multiple entitlements for each customer you may prefer to pick an appropriate entitlement when the case is created.

Entitlement Terms

Field	Explanation
Allocation Type	The allocated type can be in terms of time or number of cases. The default being number of cases.
Decrease Remaining On	The decrease remaining on can be on case creation or resolution. The distinction here might be a contractual one! Is the customer entitled to raise “n” queries or is the customer entitled to have “n” queries fixed? A subtle difference maybe but possibly an important one.
Total Terms	Here enter the total number of cases or total number of support hours associated with this entitlement. If your entitlement is open ended, meaning you had answered “No” to restrict based on entitlement terms an entry of zero would be valid. But if you are restricting based on entitle terms the entry of a positive value will be required. Note: If you enter zero and to not restrict. Each time a case is logged against this entitlement the remaining figure will still be decremented. Meaning it will be a negative value.
Entitlement Channel – Name	Optionally you can select that an entitlement term applies to just one or more channels. Often this will be blank but if you contract is for just phone support (for example) you may wish to use this feature.
Entitlement Channel – Total Terms	The total terms for each must (in total) equate to less than or equal to the total terms. This is simply the amount of support which is allowed against the total on this channel.

You can optionally associate the entitlement with specific products and contacts. In my simple example this wasn’t required. As the entitlement applies to all cases created for Contoso.