CSM System Setup and Configuration

This is half the exam. If you master one domain, make it this one. It covers the customer data model, case management, assignment, roles, entitlements/SLAs, and the agent experience.

The customer data model: Account, Contact, Consumer

CSM extends the platform's Customer Service application with records that describe who you support. Three core record types anchor the data model:

• Account — a company or organization you provide support to. Accounts can be hierarchical (parent/child) so a global enterprise and its subsidiaries are modeled as related records. Accounts can be subdivided into Business Units and child accounts for large customers. The Account is the B2B anchor.
• Contact — an individual person who belongs to an Account. Contacts are the people you interact with in a B2B relationship. A Contact's underlying sys_user record is what logs in to the portal.
• Consumer — an individual customer in a B2C model who has no associated company. Consumers are stored in the Consumer (csm_consumer) table and are the direct customer in business-to-consumer support.

Engagement models you must distinguish:

• B2B (business-to-business) — you support Accounts and their Contacts. Cases are tied to an Account.
• B2C (business-to-consumer) — you support Consumers directly; there is no Account/Contact layer.
• B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) — a layered model where a business sells through to end consumers. The data model links a partner/seller Account, the products/assets sold, and the end Consumer, so you can support the consumer while still tracking the business relationship that delivered the product. This is the model to reach for when an enterprise serves consumers through partner organizations.

Related records that round out the model: Products and Product Models, Assets and Installed Base / Install Base Items (what a customer owns or has deployed), Partners (organizations that resell or service on your behalf), and Relationships between accounts/contacts.

Case management and case types

The Case (sn_customerservice_case) is the central work record in CSM — it represents a customer's request, question, issue, or complaint. The case lifecycle typically flows New → Open (Work in Progress) → Awaiting Info → Resolved → Closed, with states configurable per business need. Cases support Case Tasks for breaking work into assignable pieces.

Case types let you tailor forms, fields, flows, and behavior to different kinds of work. Out-of-box and configurable case types commonly include:

• Standard / support case — the general issue or question.
• Order case (Customer Service for Orders / Order Management) — handles product orders and order-related issues.
• Major case — used when a single root issue affects many customers. A Major Case is the parent; affected individual cases become Major Case Children, letting agents communicate and resolve broadly from one place (mass updates, shared work notes).
• Case from interaction — created from an Interaction record (chat, phone, messaging) captured in the Agent/Configurable Workspace.

Create Case can be initiated by agents in the workspace, by customers in the portal, by email inbound actions, and via integrations. Cases capture the Account, Contact/Consumer, Product, Asset/Install Base, Priority, Contact type/channel, and entitlement/contract context.

Advanced Work Assignment (AWA)

AWA automatically pushes work (cases, case tasks, chats, interactions) to the right agents based on availability, capacity, and skills — replacing manual queue cherry-picking. Core building blocks:

• Service Channel — defines a type of work to be routed (e.g., a case channel, a chat channel). Each channel carries a work item capacity cost that consumes agent capacity.
• Inbound source / assignment rules — qualify which records (by condition) enter a channel and route to a queue.
• Queue — holds work waiting to be assigned; queues have assignment criteria and can route by skills or by group.
• Agent capacity / Agent presence — each agent has a maximum capacity; presence states (Available, Busy, Offline) gate whether work is pushed. AWA only assigns to available agents who have remaining capacity.
• Routing conditions — by group membership, by skills (skill-based routing matches required skills on the work item to skills on the agent), and by capacity/eligibility.

Set up an AWA channel for cases/case tasks so work is auto-assigned rather than manually picked.

CSM roles

Roles control who can do what. The CSM-specific roles you must know (namespace sn_customerservice):

• Agent (sn_customerservice.agent) — internal service rep who works cases in the workspace.
• Manager / ESM Agent / Senior Agent — supervisory roles that add reporting, escalation, and team management. Customer Service Manager (sn_customerservice.manager) oversees agents and teams.
• Customer (sn_customerservice.customer) — an external Contact who can log in to the Customer Service Portal, open and track cases for their Account, and use self-service. This is the standard external end-user role.
• Customer Admin (sn_customerservice.customer_admin) — a privileged external Contact who can manage other Contacts within their own Account (add/disable users, manage account info) — i.e., delegated administration of their company's users in the portal.
• Consumer (sn_customerservice.consumer) and Consumer Agent — for B2C support.
• Partner (sn_customerservice.partner, partner_admin) — for partner organizations in B2B2C/partner scenarios.

Key distinction for the exam: Customer = manage my own cases; Customer Admin = manage my company's other users; Agent = internal worker; Manager = internal supervisor. Never grant admin or itil to an external contact.

Entitlements, service contracts, and SLAs

CSM ties what support a customer is owed to the case:

• Service Contract — the agreement between you and the customer defining the support they're entitled to (term, products covered, support hours).
• Entitlement — defines the kind/level of support (e.g., phone, chat, web; 24x7 vs business hours) and the conditions under which it applies. Entitlements can be matched to a case by Account, Product, Asset, or Contact and are used to determine the correct SLA.
• Entitlement calculation — when a case is created/updated, CSM evaluates the customer's contracts and entitlements to determine coverage and the applicable SLA. A case without a valid entitlement can be flagged.
• SLA (Service Level Agreement) — measures response and resolution timing against the entitlement. CSM uses the platform's SLA Definitions (Task SLA) with schedules/business hours; SLAs can pause (e.g., Awaiting Info) and breach.

Special Handling Notes

Special Handling Notes are configurable, condition-based alerts that surface important contextual instructions to agents at the right moment — for example, "VIP account, escalate immediately," "Do not contact after 6pm," or compliance warnings. They are tied to records (Account, Contact, Consumer, Product, etc.), can be scheduled (effective dates), can require acknowledgement, and display prominently in the workspace so agents see them before acting. They are a common exam topic because they're a CSM-specific way to drive agent behavior without code.

Agent experience: Configurable Workspace

The CSM Configurable Workspace (built on UI Builder / Next Experience) is the modern agent interface, succeeding the older Agent Workspace. Agents use it to work cases, run Playbooks, view the customer 360/timeline, launch interactions, and access guided processes. Know that the Configurable Workspace is the current recommended agent UI and that legacy Agent Workspace customers are guided to migrate to it.

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