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Milestone Actions
Milestone actions are time-dependent workflow actions that occur on milestones in an entitlement process. Actions can be added to milestones after the milestone is added to an entitlement process.
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For example, you can create a milestone action that:
- Sends an email alert to certain users an hour before a First Response milestone is near violation
- Updates certain fields on a case one minute after a First Response milestone successfully completes
You can add three types of actions to milestones:
You can automate these actions for each action type:
| Workflow Action | What It Does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| New Task | Create a workflow task | Create a task for a support rep to call a customer when a First Response milestone is violated. |
| New Email | Create an email alert | Notify case owners when a First Response milestone on their case is near violation. |
| New Field Update | Define a field update | Update the case Priority field to High when a First Response milestone is near violation. |
| New Flow | Create an autolaunched flow | Send a Slack notification to support reps when a First Response milestone is near violation. The new flow created via the workflow action is only visible as long as it is associated with the milestone. Once the association is removed the flow is not available for selection again. |
| New Outbound Message | Define an outbound message | Send data about parts or services to an external system after a First Response milestone is completed. |
| Select Existing Action | Select an existing action | Use an existing email alert to notify a case owner when their case is near violation of a first response. |
Things to consider while using milestone actions:
- Time trigger action calculations don’t account for a case’s milestone business hours.
- Field updates temporarily lock a case and can trigger automation such as case assignment rules. Field updates have a processing time limit of 10 seconds. Longer updates fail without an error. Reasons for this type of failure include updates to a field that’s already locked or complex business logic that runs longer than 10 seconds.
- Warning and Violation actions don’t honor the business hours for the minutes, hours, and days, before or after the milestone target date. These actions are converted into minutes on a 24-hour clock, and don’t use business hours.
Acme has their business hours set to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week (Monday though Friday). In minutes, that’s 480 minutes per day. They have a milestone with a time trigger of 1,919 minutes, which is four full business days. 5,760 minutes is four 24-hour days. They defined a warning action time trigger as "2 Days Before". Here, that means 2,880 minutes before the milestone target date.
A case comes in that meets the milestone entry criteria on Monday at 9 AM. The target date for the case is 16:59 PM on the coming Thursday. Because the warning action uses a 24-hour clock, the warning must be issued 2,880 minutes, or six business days, beforehand. Given this setup requires the warning to be issued in the past, or on the previous Thursday, the warning action executes immediately.
