Chatter Feed
A Chatter feed is the Salesforce stream of updates that appears on profiles, groups, the Chatter tab, topic detail pages, and record detail pages.
Definition
A Chatter feed is the Salesforce stream of updates that appears on profiles, groups, the Chatter tab, topic detail pages, and record detail pages. It shows posts, comments, files, links, questions, polls, and system-generated record updates that are relevant to a person, a record, a group, or a topic. Each entry is a feed item that links to its author, its parent context, and the people who liked, commented, or were mentioned in it.
The feed is how internal teams talk to each other around CRM data without leaving Salesforce. A rep posts an update on an opportunity, and the manager who follows that record sees it in their personal feed. An agent logs a note on a case, and teammates following the case pick it up. Chatter has lost some prominence as Slack adoption grew, but the feed is still the canonical record-level conversation surface in Salesforce.
How the Chatter feed is built and where it shows up
The four places a feed appears
A Chatter feed is not a single object. It is a view that renders in several contexts, and each context filters feed items differently. The What I Follow feed on the Chatter tab is the personal stream. It collects posts from the people, records, groups, and topics the signed-in user follows, plus that user's own posts. The record feed sits on every record detail page that has feed tracking turned on, and it shows manual posts alongside system updates for that one record. The group feed lives inside each Chatter group and carries only that group's posts and members. Profile feeds show what a single user has posted, and topic detail pages aggregate every post tagged with a given topic. The same feed item can surface in more than one of these views at once. A post made on an account record appears on that account's feed, in the feed of anyone following the account, and on the poster's own profile. Understanding which view a user is looking at explains why two people see different things in what looks like the same Chatter.
Feed items and their subtypes
Every entry in a feed is a feed item with a subtype that controls how it renders and which actions apply. Text posts carry plain commentary. Link posts attach a URL with a preview. Content posts carry an uploaded file. Question posts and poll posts add structured interaction, letting people answer or vote inline. Alongside these human posts sit system-generated items, which Salesforce calls feed tracked changes. When a tracked field changes on a record, the platform writes a tracked-change item to that record's feed automatically, with no user action. The mix of subtypes is why reporting on feeds usually filters by type. A community manager looking for genuine engagement wants the text, content, and question posts, not the wall of automatic field-change entries. The Connect REST API exposes all of this programmatically through feed elements, so a developer can read a record feed, a news feed, a user-profile feed, or a company feed, and can post new items, comments, likes, and mentions from code.
Feed tracking turns field changes into posts
Feed tracking is the setting that decides which field changes become feed items. An admin opens Setup, finds Feed Tracking, picks an object, and selects up to 20 fields to track. From then on, a change to any of those fields posts a tracked-change item on the record's feed and into the feed of everyone following that record. Feed tracking works on most standard objects, including accounts, cases, contacts, leads, opportunities, campaigns, and contracts, plus custom objects, external objects, users, groups, and topics. Salesforce ships with some fields tracked by default, such as opportunity stage and amount, or case status and priority. Not every field can be tracked. Auto-number, formula, and roll-up summary fields are excluded, as are encrypted fields and certain read-only system fields. Editing the tracked-field list requires the Customize Application permission, and reaching the setup page requires View Setup and Configuration. The 20-field cap per object forces a real choice about what is worth a post and what is just noise.
Following, and the 500-item ceiling
The personal feed is only as useful as a user's following list. Following a record, a person, a group, or a topic routes that thing's updates into the What I Follow stream. A user can follow a combined total of 500 people, topics, and records. That ceiling is generous for most people but real for power users who try to follow everything, so following has to be deliberate rather than reflexive. One detail trips people up: in the What I Follow feed you see tracked-field changes for the people and records you follow, but you never see system posts for your own changes to tracked fields. Salesforce assumes you already know what you just edited. Following also drives notifications. When someone you follow posts, or when a record you follow gets an update, that activity can reach your notification tray and your email digest depending on your Chatter settings. Good following discipline is the difference between a feed that surfaces the right work and one a user learns to ignore.
Bundling and the 45-day cleanup
Two platform behaviors keep feeds readable and keep storage in check. Bundling groups related tracked changes into a single collapsed entry instead of many separate posts. Salesforce bundles tracked changes when at least three of them share the same parent record and form within a set window, with a default of 1,440 minutes, which is 24 hours. A record that gets ten field edits in an afternoon shows one tidy bundle rather than ten lines of clutter. The second behavior is automatic cleanup. Salesforce deletes tracked feed updates that are older than 45 days and have no likes or comments, removing up to 20,000 such updates per week. Engagement protects an item: a tracked change that someone liked or commented on is kept. Case feed records are an exception and are retained for compliance reasons. The practical lesson is that the feed is a living conversation surface and a short-term audit trail, not a permanent archive. Anything you need to keep forever belongs in a field, a record, or proper documentation, not in an unliked system post.
Filtering the noise out of a busy feed
Because system posts can outnumber human ones, Salesforce gives readers ways to cut the noise. In Lightning Experience the What I Follow feed offers a Fewer Updates filter that hides system-generated posts and leaves the real conversation. Record, group, profile, and search pages support feed filters too, letting a user limit the view to posts, to questions, or to items matching a chosen filter. These filters are read-time choices and do not change what is stored, so two users can filter the same record feed differently. For admins, the filters pair naturally with disciplined feed tracking. If the team complains that a record feed is unreadable, the fix is usually a combination of trimming the tracked-field list at the source and teaching people to apply the Fewer Updates view. The goal is a feed where opening a record shows you the discussion that matters, not a scroll of automated stage-change entries nobody reads.
Chatter feed, Slack, and reporting
Salesforce now owns Slack, and many teams run day-to-day collaboration in Slack channels embedded on records rather than in the Chatter publisher. The two coexist. Slack tends to carry the fast back-and-forth, while the Chatter feed often serves as the record-level trail that lives inside the CRM and respects its sharing model. Neither fully replaces the other, and the practical question for an org is which surface is canonical for which use case. On the measurement side, feed activity is reportable. You can build a custom report type with an object's feed as the secondary object, then report feed activity for standard objects with feed tracking enabled, excluding tasks and events. These reports surface top contributors, the most-engaged posts, and post volume over time. Community and enablement managers use that signal to find the people driving useful conversation and the topics worth investing in. The combination of a queryable feed, custom report types, and the Connect REST API means Chatter is not a black box. It is data you can read, post to, and measure like anything else on the platform.
How to set up Chatter feed tracking on an object
Feed tracking controls which record changes turn into Chatter feed items. Enable it per object and choose the fields whose changes are worth a post. This is the single highest-leverage setting for making record feeds useful instead of noisy.
- Open Feed Tracking in Setup
From Setup, type Feed Tracking in the Quick Find box and click Feed Tracking. The left column lists every object that supports tracking, from accounts and cases to your custom objects.
- Select an object and enable tracking
Click the object you want, then select the Enable Feed Tracking checkbox. Until this box is checked, that object's records have no feed and no tracked-change posts.
- Choose the fields to track
Pick the fields whose changes deserve a post, up to 20 per object. Stay well under the cap; track only fields that drive conversation, like opportunity stage or case status, not every editable field.
- Save and confirm on a record
Click Save. Open a record of that object, change a tracked field, and confirm the system post appears in the feed and in the feed of anyone following the record.
The per-object switch that turns the feed on. Off by default for custom objects; some standard objects ship enabled with default fields.
The list of fields whose changes post to the feed. Auto-number, formula, roll-up summary, and encrypted fields cannot be selected.
When publisher actions are enabled, posts a feed item when related records are created, so child activity surfaces on the parent feed.
- Editing tracked fields needs the Customize Application permission; reaching the page needs View Setup and Configuration.
- You never see system posts for your own edits to tracked fields, only for changes made by others on records you follow.
- Tracked updates older than 45 days with no likes or comments are deleted automatically, so the feed is not a permanent archive.
- Over-tracking buries human posts under field-change noise; trim the list and tell users about the Fewer Updates filter.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Chatter Feed in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Chatter Feeds OverviewSalesforce
- Feed TrackingSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Chatter Feed.
- Customize Chatter Feed TrackingSalesforce
- Feeds and Feed Elements (Connect REST API)Salesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Chatter Feed.
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. Which Feed Item subtype is generated by the system rather than typed by a person?
Q2. What populates a user's personal What I Follow feed on the Chatter tab?
Q3. How do Slack channels and the Chatter Feed typically coexist in a Slack-adopting org?
Discussion
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