5.7 Sales and Service Applications Case Lab

Case Lab: Cloud Kicks Support Launch

Assume a mid-sized company sells equipment subscriptions and premium support. Marketing runs webinars, sales qualifies inbound interest, account executives close deals with products, and support handles customer Cases after purchase. Leadership wants cleaner campaign reporting, reliable pipeline, faster case routing, approved troubleshooting articles, and visibility into premium support commitments. Your job as the Platform Administrator is to configure the standard application features before proposing custom automation.

Start by mapping the lifecycle. A webinar attendee should be captured as a Lead and linked to the webinar Campaign as a Campaign Member. Sales development qualifies the Lead. When qualified, the Lead is converted to an Account, Contact, and Opportunity. The Opportunity uses the right record type, stage path, products, price book, amount, close date, and forecast category. After the customer buys premium support, support Cases route by product and priority, agents use Knowledge, and entitlements track response commitments.

Build Plan

First, configure campaign tracking. Create a Campaign for the webinar and define member statuses such as Invited, Registered, Attended, and Requested Demo. Mark the statuses that represent response. Add sample Leads and Contacts as Campaign Members. Build a simple report that groups members by status and responded flag. This confirms that the marketing data model works before you load a larger list.

Second, configure lead management. Review Lead Status values and identify the converted status. Create assignment criteria or queues if the team distributes inbound Leads by region or product interest. Configure duplicate rules so likely duplicate Accounts, Contacts, or Leads are warned or blocked according to business tolerance. Map any custom Lead fields needed on Account, Contact, or Opportunity. Test conversion with a standard sales user.

Third, configure Opportunity process. Create a sales process only if the team needs a distinct subset of stages. Assign it through a record type. Enable Path with a few key fields for each stage. Add validation rules only for facts that must be present at a business moment, such as requiring next step before Proposal or Loss Reason at Closed Lost. Add Products to the Standard Price Book and any custom Price Book that the team uses, then test Opportunity Products.

Fourth, configure service intake. Create support queues such as Tier 1, Billing, and Premium Support. Build a Case assignment rule that routes by product, priority, customer tier, or origin. Add an auto-response rule that sends a clear acknowledgement with the Case number and expected next step. If premium support has contractual timing, configure entitlements, entitlement processes, milestones, and business hours. Use escalation rules for delayed action when entitlements are not the chosen design.

Fifth, configure agent productivity. Create or adjust a Service Console app for the support profile. Place important Case fields, related records, Knowledge search, quick actions, and utility items where agents work. Add Knowledge articles for common support issues, classify them with categories if used, and publish only to the correct channel. Add Quick Text or macros for repeatable steps that still require agent review.

Test Matrix

Minimum test paths

• Marketing user adds Leads and Contacts to a Campaign and sees response reports.
• Sales development user accepts or owns a Lead, updates status, and converts a qualified Lead.
• Account executive creates an Opportunity, follows Path, adds products, and updates stage.
• Sales manager sees expected forecast data based on owner, close date, amount, and category.
• Support agent receives a routed Case from a queue and works it in the Service Console.
• Customer acknowledgement email is sent for the expected Case criteria.
• Premium Case starts the correct milestone under the right business hours.
• Agent finds a Knowledge article and uses approved response text without seeing restricted content.

Testing as System Administrator is not enough. Use the profiles and permission sets that real users have. If a test works only for the admin, check app assignment, object permissions, field-level security, record type access, page layout assignment, Lightning page activation, and queue membership. Also test negative paths, such as a Lead missing a required mapping field or a Case that does not match an assignment rule entry.

Reporting And Operational Review

The implementation should produce useful reports without manual cleanup. Marketing needs campaign response and conversion reporting. Sales needs pipeline by stage, product, owner, close date, and forecast category. Support needs new Cases by origin, age by priority, queue backlog, first response performance, entitlement milestone status, and Knowledge article usefulness. Reports reveal whether the configuration supports the process or merely stores data.

Schedule a review after initial rollout. Look for duplicate records, stages with stale Opportunities, Cases sitting in queues too long, auto-response emails that confuse customers, and articles that agents never use. Configuration is not finished when the fields exist. It is finished when users can do their work, managers can trust the reports, and admins can explain the behavior.

Scenario Decisions

If leadership asks for Agentforce to answer all support questions, evaluate the use case rather than accepting the phrasing. AI assistance may help draft replies or summarize Cases when grounded in approved Knowledge and controlled by permissions. It should not publish unreviewed policy, expose restricted records, or approve refunds without human control. For deterministic steps such as assignment, entitlement timing, and validation, native rules or Flow usually provide clearer governance.

If sales asks to create Opportunities for every Campaign response, protect the pipeline. Use Campaign Members and Lead qualification first. If support asks to route every Case with one massive Flow, check whether assignment rules, auto-response rules, escalation rules, entitlements, Knowledge, and console configuration already cover the standard behavior. The Platform Administrator answer is not always the most custom answer; it is the most maintainable configuration that satisfies the business requirement.

Hands-On Lab Steps

1. Create a Campaign with four member statuses and add one Lead and one Contact.
2. Configure or review Lead Status values, then convert a qualified Lead into Account, Contact, and Opportunity.
3. Create a simple Opportunity sales process, enable Path, and add one Product through an active Price Book Entry.
4. Create two Case queues, one assignment rule, and one auto-response rule.
5. Configure a simple Service Console app page with Case details and a common support quick action.
6. If Knowledge and entitlements are available in the org, create one article and one basic entitlement process for testing.
7. Run reports for campaign response, pipeline by stage, products on Opportunities, open Cases by queue, and Cases approaching milestone targets.

This lab is intentionally end-to-end. The exam objective is not to memorize where every button sits, because Salesforce setup pages evolve. The durable skill is knowing which feature owns each behavior, how records flow between sales and service, and how to test the configuration from the perspective of the people who use it every day.