Chatter Answers is retired, so the work is not setting up Data Categories for Answers but migrating off them to the modern Experience Cloud Question and Answer feature.
- Inventory legacy data
Find any Chatter Answers Question records, Data Category Groups configured for Answers, and old Experience Cloud sites using the legacy Customer Community template.
- Stand up an Experience Cloud site with Question and Answer
Setup, Digital Experiences. Pick a template that supports Question and Answer.
- Configure Topics for categorization
Replace the Data Category hierarchy with Topics. Pick a flat or shallow topic structure; the hierarchy from Data Categories often does not map cleanly.
- Migrate questions and answers
For orgs with valuable Question history, write an Apex script that reads old Questions and creates equivalent Question records in the new Experience Cloud site with Topics applied.
- Update Knowledge articles
Knowledge articles that used the old Data Categories for browsing may need re-tagging to align with the new Topics structure.
- Decommission Chatter Answers metadata
Once the new community is live and data is migrated, remove the old Data Category Group configurations that were Answers-specific.
- Chatter Answers is fully retired. There is no path to keep it running; migration is the only forward path.
- Data Categories and Topics are different categorization models. The migration is not a one-to-one mapping; expect to restructure.
- Question records from Chatter Answers retain their data but no longer have a UI to browse. The records are accessible only through SOQL or reports.
- Knowledge integration with Data Categories continues to work for Knowledge itself. Only the Answers side of the integration is retired.
- Some legacy orgs have layers of unused Data Category configuration. Audit before assuming what is in use.