Category, Ideas
Category for Ideas is the legacy Salesforce Ideas feature that organised user-submitted ideas into one or more category dropdowns inside an Idea Community (or Zone).
Definition
Category for Ideas is the legacy Salesforce Ideas feature that organised user-submitted ideas into one or more category dropdowns inside an Idea Community (or Zone). Members posted ideas into specific categories so other community members could browse and vote. The Idea object's Categories field held the multi-select tagging; each community could define its own category list. Salesforce Ideas was bundled with the older Community Application alongside legacy Answers, and the same retirement pattern applied: Ideas as a standalone product was deprecated, with Chatter Feed and Experience Cloud Q&A now serving the modern equivalent.
Idea Categories matter to readers of legacy Salesforce documentation because the term appears in pre-2020 certification material, partner blogs, and AppExchange listings. Newer Salesforce orgs no longer expose Ideas as a top-level community feature, though the underlying objects (Idea, IdeaComment, Vote) remain queryable for orgs that ran the feature historically. Modern product feedback programs run on a mix of Chatter Questions, Experience Cloud Q&A, third-party feedback tools (Pendo, ProductBoard), and Salesforce Community surfaces with the Idea-style functionality rebuilt from custom objects. The Categories concept lives on inside those custom builds even though the standard Categories for Ideas field is no longer the canonical surface.
Category for Ideas in the broader Salesforce community history
The Idea object schema
Idea is a standard object with Title, Body, Status, Categories (multi-select picklist), Community (the parent Idea Zone), Submitter, Vote count, and Comment count. Each Idea belongs to one Zone but can carry multiple categories. The schema remains queryable in older orgs.
How Categories worked inside Idea Zones
Each Idea Zone defined its own Categories picklist (Mobile App, Reporting, Performance, Integrations, etc.). Submitters tagged ideas against one or more categories; readers filtered the zone by category to find related ideas. Voting and commenting happened at the Idea level; categories drove discovery.
Idea Zones and parallel communities
Salesforce supported multiple Idea Zones in one org, each with its own category list and member group. Customer-facing zones, internal-employee zones, and partner zones often ran in parallel with different categories suited to each audience.
Voting, comments, and status
Members voted ideas up or down. Comments accumulated under each idea. The Status field tracked product-team response (Under Consideration, Planned, Released, Declined). Categories did not affect voting or status; they were strictly an organisational dimension.
Why Salesforce moved away from Ideas
Like the legacy Answers feature, Salesforce Ideas overlapped with Chatter Feed-based features once those launched. Maintaining a standalone Ideas product alongside Chatter and Experience Cloud Q&A created duplicate workflows. Salesforce retired Ideas as a top-level community feature with the same migration path: rebuild on Chatter and Experience Cloud or on custom objects.
Where customer idea programs run today
Modern Salesforce customer feedback programs use Experience Cloud Q&A, Chatter Questions, and third-party tools (Pendo, ProductBoard, Aha!) integrated with Salesforce. Some orgs still build a custom Idea object with Categories to preserve the legacy structure under modern Salesforce surfaces.
Reporting impact
Reports built on the Idea object with Category filters still work in orgs that have legacy data. New programs build reports on Feed Item or custom objects depending on the chosen replacement. Migration plans usually rebuild reports rather than translate them.
Where the term appears today
Category for Ideas appears in pre-2020 documentation, certification material, and partner blog posts. Modern Salesforce documentation no longer covers it. Treat older references as historical; current product feedback work happens on Chatter, Experience Cloud, or third-party tools.
How to migrate from Category for Ideas
Most orgs migrated off legacy Ideas years ago. Remaining migrations involve preserving historical idea data and choosing a modern equivalent.
- Inventory legacy Idea data
Query Idea, IdeaComment, Vote. Document idea count, categories, and submission history. Decide whether to migrate the data or preserve it in place.
- Choose a modern replacement
Experience Cloud Q&A with Topics, Chatter Questions, custom Idea object, or a third-party integration (Pendo, ProductBoard). Each fits different use cases.
- Rebuild category structure
Whatever the replacement, recreate the Category structure as Topics, custom picklists, or third-party tags. The taxonomy was useful; do not lose it in migration.
- Migrate historical ideas
Map legacy Idea records to the new surface. The conversion is one-time; plan it before retiring the legacy Ideas zones.
- Retire the legacy Idea Zone
Once data is migrated and the replacement surface is live, retire the legacy Idea Zone. Keep the Idea object data queryable for audit but stop accepting new submissions there.
- Category for Ideas references in pre-2020 docs are historical. Treat them as such.
- The legacy Idea object still queries but the UI is largely retired. Plan replacement before relying on it.
- Categories preserved poorly during migration to flat Topic models. Plan the taxonomy carefully.
- Voting and comment data has no direct equivalent on Chatter Questions. Custom-object replacements preserve the model better.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Salesforce IdeasSalesforce Help
- Experience Cloud OverviewSalesforce Help
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Category, Ideas.
- Chatter Questions OverviewSalesforce Help
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is a Category in Salesforce Ideas?
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