Entitlements and support terms

What it does

An entitlement records what support a customer has bought: a date range, an allocation of cases or hours, optionally split by channel, and the SLA that applies. When an agent picks the entitlement on a case, the SLA comes with it and the remaining balance is decremented.

Key facts

Allocation Type is either number of cases or number of hours. Decrease Remaining On is either case creation or case resolution. Both are set on the entitlement and both are argued about later.
Total Term is what was sold; Remaining Term is calculated. Cancelling a case gives the term back when decrementing on creation; reactivating a resolved case gives it back when decrementing on resolution.
Restrict based on entitlement terms set to Yes blocks case creation once Remaining Term hits zero. Set to No, cases still get created and the remaining term goes negative.
Statuses run Draft, Waiting, Active, Expired and Cancelled. Waiting is automatic for a future-dated entitlement and flips to Active on the start date.
An Active entitlement is read-only. To change anything you deactivate it, edit, and reactivate.
Entitlement channels let you split the allocation per channel — for example 80 hours phone, 20 hours email — with its own remaining term. The entitlement must be saved before you can add channels, products or contacts.
Leave the Products list empty and the entitlement covers all products. Leave the Contacts list empty and any contact under the primary customer can claim it. Both are restrictions, not requirements.
Set As Default makes an entitlement apply automatically to new cases. Do Not Decrement Entitlement Terms stops a default entitlement eating its own balance.
Renew creates a fresh Draft copy starting today, running for the same duration as the original, with the other fields copied. The original stays as it was.
Entitlement templates hold the same term fields, SLA link, products and channels, and exist so you can stamp out consistent entitlements per customer rather than retyping them.

When to use / skip

Use entitlements when support levels genuinely differ by customer and someone is counting — a paid support product, a tiered contract, a block of prepaid hours. They are the intended way to attach different SLAs to different customers without building a wall of Applicable When conditions.

Skip them when every customer gets the same treatment. A default SLA on the case table does that job with no ongoing administration, and an entitlement per account is just data someone has to maintain.

Be careful with the counting side specifically. Plenty of clients want entitlements for the SLA linkage and have no intention of tracking hours; in that case configure a generous total term with decrementing switched off, or you will spend go-live explaining why cases are blocked. Hour-based allocation in particular is only worth it if agents genuinely record time, which most do not.

Configuration decisions

Cases or hours as the allocation, and whether the client can actually capture the data that implies.
Decrement on creation or on resolution. Creation is simpler and defensible; resolution is fairer and generates more support calls when cases are reopened.
Whether to restrict case creation at zero, or allow overdraft and report on it. Blocking is a hard stop that agents cannot override.
Whether channels get separate allocations, and whether that matches how the contract was actually sold.
Whether a default entitlement exists at all, and if so whether it decrements.
Templates: how many, and who owns creating entitlements from them at contract renewal.

Gotchas

You cannot edit an Active entitlement. Deactivating one to fix a typo takes it out of play for new cases while you do it.
Renewal does not carry the old balance across. It is a copy of the terms, not a continuation of the count.
The decrement runs on Dataverse plug-in steps on case create and update. If those steps are inactive — usually after a solution import gone wrong — the terms silently stop moving while everything else keeps working.
An entitlement with no products and no contacts is broader than it looks. People add the lists later assuming they were narrowing, and only then discover it was already open to everyone.
Blocking on zero remaining terms surfaces as a create failure to the agent, not a helpful message about contract renewal.
Expired entitlements do not tidy themselves out of the agent's lookup experience for long; agents will ask why last year's contract is still visible in history.

Consultant notes

Get finance in the room for the decrement conversation. It is a commercial decision dressed as a configuration setting, and service managers will not own it.
Demo the case form with the entitlement lookup and the remaining term visible. That is the bit sponsors care about.
Push back on hour-based entitlements unless there is real time capture. Otherwise you are building a counter nobody feeds.
Before go-live, confirm the entitlement plug-in steps are active in the target environment and run one case end to end to see the balance move.

Worth revisiting if entitlement terms ever gain a proper renewal that carries balances forward.