Service and Sales Cloud Applications
Service Cloud mechanics
Case routing is a chain: Web-to-Case and Email-to-Case create the case, assignment rules pick the owner (only one rule can be active at a time), queues hold unowned work, and escalation rules age cases into new owners or actions. Entitlements, with service contracts and milestones, govern whether a customer is covered and start or stop SLA timers - milestones require Entitlement Management to be enabled. Know Omni-Channel routing, the Service Console, Knowledge, and CTI basics.
Sales Cloud mechanics
Leads convert into an account, a contact, and optionally an opportunity; conversion maps fields and can be blocked by validation rules. Web-to-Lead has a daily submission cap (500 by default) and needs the generated HTML form. Opportunities connect to products through price books and to quotes through synced quote line items. Forecasting depends on forecast category mappings from stage, on quotas, and - in larger orgs - on territory models rather than the role hierarchy. Paths, Big Deal Alerts, and lead assignment rules round out the admin surface.
Traps
- A lead can be converted only once; converted leads become read-only, so capture data first.
- Assignment rules act at creation; escalation rules act on age and ownership. Questions swap these.
- Inactivating a user or deleting a queue owner requires reassigning their cases and leads.
- Forecast categories are not stages; the mapping between them drives rollups.
- Territory management is separate from the role hierarchy - do not conflate record access with forecasting structure.
Worked example
A customer reports missed SLAs: check entitlement assignment first, then whether milestones were configured on that entitlement, then whether escalation rules fired. A missing entitlement silently means no milestone clock ever starts.