Chatter activity and influence are part of Chatter, which is on by default in most editions. You do not turn influence on with a single toggle. Instead you confirm Chatter and profiles are enabled and that users are actually posting, since the levels only appear once there is activity to rank. These steps describe how an admin confirms the feature is in place and where to look.
- Confirm Chatter is enabled
In Setup, open Chatter Settings and verify that Chatter is enabled for the org. The activity and influence statistics depend on Chatter being on, so this is the prerequisite before anything appears on profiles.
- Check that profiles are visible
Influence levels render on user profiles. Make sure the profile and people features are available to your users so they can open a colleague's profile and see the activity and influence panel beneath the photo.
- Switch to Salesforce Classic to view the panel
The prominent activity and influence panel is a Salesforce Classic profile element. Open a user profile in Classic to see the influence level alongside posts, comments made, comments received, and likes received.
- Encourage activity so levels populate
Levels only mean something once people post and react. Run an adoption push (post prompts, recognize contributors) so the feed has enough activity for Top Influencer and Active Influencer levels to appear.
Available in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Contact Manager editions in Salesforce Classic.
Activity and influence appear on a user's profile and on colleagues' profiles, so anyone with profile access can see the level and the counts.
The influence rank is readable through the Chatter REST API and the UserInfluence object for reporting and integrations.
- There is no admin slider for the influence weights. Salesforce keeps the formula proprietary, so you cannot reconfigure how posts, comments, and likes are scored.
- The Classic-style influence panel is not surfaced the same way in Lightning Experience, so teams on Lightning often do not see it without going to Classic or the API.
- Levels reflect recent activity, not lifetime totals, so a user can drop from Top Influencer to Observer after a quiet period even with a long posting history.
- Treat it as legacy. Salesforce now points new collaboration investment at Slack, so do not build a long-term recognition program solely on Chatter Influence.