Get Started with SLA Policies
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Define SLA policies and their components.
- Explain how SLA policies are beneficial to your company.
- Enable the simplified setup for faster configuration.
Introduction
Ursa Major Solar is growing rapidly, and that means the support team is always busy. The company’s customers reach out every day with questions, issues, and service requests. As these questions keep piling up, it becomes harder to maintain Ursa Major Solar’s very impressive service standards.
The support reps realize that even with the best intentions, it’s hard to keep track of who needs help first. Some cases slip through the cracks, and customers start to notice delays. That’s when Maria Jimenez, the Salesforce admin at Ursa Major Solar, decides to introduce SLA policies.
What Are SLA Policies?
SLA stands for service level agreements, which are policies that help Ursa Major Solar deliver consistent, reliable service. They define how quickly cases should be responded to and resolved, based on the commitments the company makes to its customers.
Think of an SLA policy as your service team’s personal to-do list. Each time a case is created, the policy lays out every step that the rep has to follow in a systematic way, sending reps alerts through the process to keep them on track. And it even acts as a stopwatch, tracking how long it takes to respond and resolve the case. If a deadline approaches, the system knows to automatically send an email or escalate the case to a manager. This results in a smoother process, happier agents, and even happier customers.
Why SLA Policies Matter
SLA policies build trust. When customers consistently get fast and reliable support, they know they can count on you. What’s more, the policies ensure:
- Customers know exactly what kind of service to expect.
- Agents know which cases to tackle first.
- Managers see when someone’s about to miss a deadline and step in before it’s too late.
With the right SLA policies in place, Maria can bring clarity and structure to every step of the service process. Before she sets these policies up, she takes the time to learn more about what an SLA Policy contains.
To understand how SLA policies work, it helps to know their main building blocks.
Name |
Description |
|---|---|
Milestones |
Time-based checkpoints that define the key goals of your support process. They track things like how quickly you respond to a customer or how long it takes to close a case. Many milestones come together to make an SLA policy. |
Entitlements |
The link between SLA policies and accounts, assets, contacts, and service contracts. You can also define how many times or until when customers are entitled to service, and via which channels. |
Operational level agreements (OLA) |
Internal policies that align the different teams involved in resolving a case—like technical support, billing, and product development—so everyone is working toward the same service goals. |
Together, these components ensure that your service operations are consistent, transparent, and aligned across the organization.
Ready to Get Hands-on with the Simplified SLA Setup?
Create a new Trailhead Playground now to follow along and try out the steps in this module. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click the playground name, and then select Create Playground. It typically takes 3–4 minutes for Salesforce to create your Trailhead Playground. You also use the playground when it's time to complete the hands-on challenges.
Yes, we really mean a brand-new Trailhead playground! If you use an existing org or playground, you can run into problems completing the challenges.
Enable the Simplified SLA Policy Setup
Now that Maria understands how SLA policies work, she’s excited to build new ones for the company’s service team. She wants something fast, intuitive, and easy for her team to maintain.
So Maria turns to the new simplified setup that brings everything she needs—milestones, entitlements, and SLA policies—into one unified view. No more hopping between pages or digging through different setup menus. With simplified setup, creating and managing SLAs is quicker, clearer, and much more admin-friendly.
As you complete this module, follow along in the playground you created.
But before Maria can dive into building her first shiny new policy, she needs to turn on the simplified setup in her org. Let’s walk through the steps with her. You’ll need to do this to pass the challenge in this unit.
- Click Setup
, then select Setup.
- In the Quick Find box, search for and select Entitlement Settings.
- Check the Simplified SLA Setup box to turn on the simplified set up.
- Scroll down and click Save.
That’s it! With simplified setup enabled, Maria can jump right into creating SLA policies that help Ursa Major Solar’s support team respond faster, stay organized, and give every customer the solar-powered service experience they deserve.