Don’t wait for problems to surface — spot them before they do. Proactive Alerts regularly scan Salesforce for time-sensitive records like overdue tasks, stalled cases, or creeping deadlines, then notify users before things slip through the cracks. No more manual checks — just timely nudges to keep everything on track.

Walkthrough: Idle Case Alert

Let's walk through a step-by-step guide to building an automation that proactively alerts case owners when a case is sat idle, ensuring a timely follow up to maintain operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

• Go to the Act On It Lightning app and select the "Message Automation" tab.
• Click "New" and select the "Timed and Proactive Alerts" option.
• Give the automation a name (e.g. "Idle Case Alert") and description (e.g. "Notify case owners if high priority cases have had no activity in the last 48 hours").
• Select "Cases" as the record type to track, and click "Next".

Note - Admins can enable notifications for custom objects too.

Define your search criteria:

• Set a record age limit of 365 days (excluding older Cases).

• Conditions allow you to precisely define what constitutes an "idle case" in your search criteria. For basic logic, you can filter on the Last Modified Date field to identify cases untouched for a specified time period, as shown in this example.More advanced options are also available. You can create logic around page view tracking, case milestones, email activity and other related data to identify idle cases. This allows very customized automations tailored to your specific processes. Click here to learn more.
• Click "Manage Conditions".
• Add conditions to isolate high priority cases idle for 48 business hours:
  • Priority is set to "High".
  • Last Modified Date is less than 48 working hours ago.

Choose how frequently you'd like Act On It to check for idle cases. 

• Select "Multiple Times a Day".
• Every hour throughout the day.
• Monday to Friday.

  
  

Choose who to notify. You can notify any combination of users, queues, roles, groups and related users:

• Select "Add Or Remove".
• Select the "Related Users" tab.
• Choose "Owner" to notify the Case's owner.
• Optionally choose 'Include Queue Owners' to notify queue members if the Case is assigned to a queue.
• Click "Confirm" to add to the list, "Confirm" to submit the changes, and "Next".

Configure the message that will be sent:

• Search for an existing Message Type or create a new one. Existing types can be reused across automations. Click here for details on creating a new Message Type.
• Expand "Customize your message" to edit the message for this specific automation.
• Optionally add merge fields to personalize with record data. E.g. add the Case Number or related Contact's name to the alert message.
• Preview how the message will look by firing a test message.
• Click "Next" to proceed.

  
  

Review the summary:

• Confirm the alert, recipients and search criteria are correct.
• Return to a previous step to make any changes.
• Click "Yes, Save Message Automation".

Your automation is now active. Case owners will be notified whenever a high priority case has remained unedited for over 48 operational business hours. Messages delivered will be visible under the 'Messages' tab of the Act On It Lightning Application.

For details on finding and fine tuning your automation, click here.