Index Chatter feeds

This is for:

Developer System Administrator

Salesforce Chatter is a collaboration tool that enables users to share updates, files, and comments on records within your Salesforce organization. Chatter feed items can contain valuable context about customer interactions, internal discussions, and business processes that users need to find through search.

By indexing Chatter feeds, you make collaboration content searchable alongside your Salesforce records, helping users discover relevant conversations, decisions, and shared files. Chatter content can be associated with various Salesforce objects (such as Accounts, Cases, and Opportunities), posted in groups, or shared on user profiles.

This article explains how to select and configure Chatter feed objects in your Salesforce source to ensure the right content is indexed. You’ll learn which objects to select for different scenarios, how to apply conditions to narrow your indexed content, and how Chatter permissions are maintained in search results.

Index Chatter feed objects

  1. Add a Salesforce source linked to your Salesforce organization, ensuring all prerequisites are met.

  2. On the source subpage, the Content to index subtab lets you select the Chatter feed objects and fields you want to index. You can use the filter at the top of the list to find the Chatter feed objects. All Chatter objects end with the word Feed. For example, Account Feed and Case Feed.

    Index Chatter | Coveo for Salesforce

  3. To index site Chatter (that is, community Chatter), select the User Feed and Collaboration Group Feed objects.

  4. To index the feed comments associated with each Chatter feed object you selected, select the Feed Comment object.

  5. For each Chatter feed object you selected, make sure to select the Salesforce fields and relationships you want to index.

  6. Follow the instructions under Add a Salesforce source to finish creating your Salesforce source.

Common use cases for indexing Chatter

This section describes the objects you must select and the conditions you must set to index the Chatter feed items that apply to the most common use cases. For information on setting conditions, see Add a condition.

Internal user updates

To index Chatter feed items created by users using the Chatter tab in the Salesforce Service application, select the object and set the condition listed in the following table.

Object Condition Description

User Feed

Network Scope Equals null

Indexes only internal Chatter posts.

Chatter groups

To index Chatter feed items inside a group, select the object and set the conditions (as appropriate) listed in the following table.

Object Condition Description

Collaboration Group Feed

Network Scope Equals null

Indexes the Chatter of internal groups.

Network Scope Not equals null

Indexes the Chatter of external community groups.

One of the following:

  • In <network ID>

  • Equals <network ID>

Indexes the Chatter of specific community groups.

parent.CollaborationType Equals 'Public'

Indexes only the Chatter of public groups.

Specific community chatter

To index the Chatter feed items created by users inside a specific community, select the objects and set the condition listed in the following table.

Important

The condition must be set on both objects.
Object Condition Description

User Feed

Network Scope Equals '<NetworkID>'

Indexes the Chatter of a specific network.

Collaboration Group Feed
Note

To index user nicknames in community posts, the FetchChatterItemBodyFromConnectApi parameter must be enabled in the Salesforce source JSON configuration.

To index only the related Chatter of a specific parent object respecting the parent conditions, follow the guidelines outlined in this example.

Note

This use case isn’t supported if the Salesforce Sharing Settings of the parent object is set to Public.
Example
Object Condition Description

Case

RecordType.Name Equals 'Backend Issue'

Indexes the cases of type Backend Issue, as well as the related Chatter that applies to these cases.

Case Feed

None

Permissions

As a general rule, users who can view a parent record can also view the Chatter feed item. For example, a feed item posted in a group can be viewed by all the group members.

Note

The only exception applies to the User Feed and Collaboration Group Feed objects. To view Chatter feed items created inside a community (that is, Network Scope Not equals null), a user must also be a member of that community.

Known limitations

  • To index Chatter related to Knowledge articles, the Knowledge and Knowledge Feed objects must be indexed in separate sources.

  • Only Chatter feed items with a Published status are supported (that is, Status = 'Published'). Feed items with a status of Draft or PendingReview are currently ignored.

  • Having specialized Feed objects (for example, User Feed and Case Feed) and the generic Feed Item object in the same source configuration isn’t supported. Use only specialized Feed objects since they’re easier to manage and configure.

  • The following item types are currently supported:

    • TextPost

    • LinkPost

    • ContentPost

    • PollPost

    • QuestionPost

    Note

    If you require support for another item type, contact Coveo Support to submit a case.