A Case is the Service Cloud record for a customer issue — the support ticket — tracking status, owner, priority, SLA, and the full thread of activity.

What is a case? | CRM Curator

A Case in Salesforce is the record that represents a customer issue, question, or request — what the rest of the industry would call a “support ticket”. It tracks status, owner, priority, SLA, the activity timeline, and every email/comment exchanged. The Case is the centre of gravity in Service Cloud.

Anatomy of a Case

Field group	Examples
Identity	CaseNumber (auto), Subject, Description
Status & lifecycle	Status (New, Working, Closed), Reason, IsClosed, Priority
People	OwnerId, ContactId, AccountId
Source	Origin (Email, Web, Phone, Chat), Type
SLA	EntitlementId, MilestoneStatus, BusinessHours
Outcomes	ClosedDate, Resolution, Satisfaction
Hierarchy	ParentId (cases can have parent/child relationships)

Where Cases come from

Cases are created via many channels — Service Cloud’s value is funnelling all of them into one queue:

Email-to-Case — emails into a monitored mailbox become Cases
Web-to-Case — public HTML form submissions
Phone — agents log calls; CTI integration can pop-and-create
Chat / Messaging — Live Agent, Enhanced Messaging, WhatsApp, SMS
Social — Service Cloud for Twitter/Facebook ingests posts as Cases
Self-service portal — Experience Cloud community
API — POST /sobjects/Case from any integration
Manual — agents create Cases inside Salesforce

Case lifecycle (standard)

New → Working → Escalated (if SLA breached) → Closed
                ↑
             On Hold (waiting on customer)

Status values are admin-configurable. Each status often maps to an SLA milestone — first response, resolution time, customer satisfaction.

Routing and ownership

When a Case is created, Case Assignment Rules route it to the right user or queue (by region, product, priority, etc.). Omni-Channel then pushes the Case to an available agent. Case Escalation Rules kick in if it sits too long.

Communication on a Case

Two main streams of conversation:

EmailMessage — emails sent or received on the Case
CaseComment — internal notes or public comments visible in the portal

Modern orgs use Feed Tracking to view all updates (status changes, ownership, emails, comments) in a chronological feed in the console.

Account / Contact — who reported it
Asset — the product instance (e.g. specific router serial) the case is about
Entitlement — the SLA contract governing response and resolution times
Knowledge Articles — articles attached as the resolution
Child Cases — for tasks broken out of one master case

Closing a Case

Closing a Case usually requires a resolution comment and category. Once closed, the Case is locked from further status changes (unless reopened by an admin), and metrics like resolution time freeze. Auto-close after N days of customer non-response is a common Flow / Process Builder pattern.

Common follow-ups

Difference between Case and Lead? — Lead = new prospect (Sales). Case = existing customer’s issue (Service).
Can a Case have a parent Case? — Yes — Case.ParentId for grouping related issues.
Where does the SLA come from? — From the linked Entitlement and its Milestones.

Verified against: Salesforce Help — Cases. Last reviewed 2026-05-17 for Spring ‘26.