Comment, Chatter
A Chatter Comment is a reply added to a Chatter feed item, such as the discussion under a post, the response to a Chatter Question, or a note an agent leaves on a Case feed.
Definition
A Chatter Comment is a reply added to a Chatter feed item, such as the discussion under a post, the response to a Chatter Question, or a note an agent leaves on a Case feed. In the data model it is stored as a FeedComment record. Each comment carries the comment body, a link to its parent feed item, the author, the created date, and any mentions, attachments, or rich text. FeedComment has existed since API version 18.0, so the object underpins almost every modern Chatter surface.
Comments are how a Chatter conversation actually happens. A post on its own is a broadcast. The comments are where people ask, clarify, agree, disagree, and decide. Likes signal acknowledgement but carry no detail, while comments carry the substance. On a Chatter Question, one comment can be marked as the best answer. Across Lightning, Service Cloud Case feeds, Chatter Groups, and Experience Cloud, the comment is the same building block.
How Chatter comments are built and used
The FeedComment record behind every reply
Every reply you type under a Chatter post becomes a FeedComment row. The object holds the CommentBody text, a reference to the parent FeedItem, the author, and the created date. A CommentType field records whether the comment is plain text or carries content like a file. An IsRichText flag tells the interface whether to render formatting. The object has been queryable through the API since version 18.0, which means comments are reportable, scriptable, and accessible from the Connect REST API. Because FeedComment is a real object, it behaves like other Salesforce data. You can run a SOQL query against it, build a report on it, or create one through Apex or the Connect REST API. Sharing still applies. A user only sees comments on records and feeds they already have access to. This matters most on record feeds, where a comment inherits the visibility of the parent record. The takeaway is simple. A Chatter comment is not loose text floating in a UI. It is structured data with an owner, a parent, and a timestamp.
Mentions turn a comment into a notification
Typing @ followed by a name inside a comment creates a mention. The mentioned person sees the comment on their profile feed, their To Me feed, and their What I Follow feed, and they get an in-app notification in Lightning Experience. People who opted in also receive an email. Mentioning a group posts to the group feed and reaches members who turned on email for every post. This is the strongest pull a comment has, because a mentioned user is far more likely to reply than a passive reader. Salesforce caps mentions at 25 per post or comment, so you cannot spam a whole department in one reply. Sharing rules are enforced here too. If you mention someone who lacks access to the record or group, the mention shows as a gray link and that person gets no notification. Self-mentions never fire a notification. The practical lesson is to mention with intent. A reply that tags the one person who can unblock the thread gets a fast answer. A reply that tags ten people who are loosely involved trains all of them to ignore the next ping.
Best Answer promotes one comment on a question
When a feed item is a Chatter Question rather than a plain post, one comment can be flagged as the best answer. Salesforce documents that the person who asked the question and moderators can select the best answer. Moderators here means Chatter moderators, Experience Cloud site moderators, or Salesforce administrators. Once chosen, the comment gets a check mark, and a copy of it appears at the top of the answer list so new visitors spot it first. Only one answer per question can hold that status, and whoever marked it can later remove the designation. This single action is one of the highest value moves in community management. A long question thread might hold twenty replies, several of them wrong or half right. Marking the correct one as best turns a messy discussion into a clean answer that anyone scanning the thread can trust. On an Experience Cloud help site, this is what keeps a question useful months after it was first asked, and it is why moderators are encouraged to revisit older threads and mark answers.
Comments inside Service Cloud Case feeds
The Case feed in the Service Console surfaces Chatter comments inline with system updates, emails, and case comments. Agents use Chatter comments to discuss case handling with colleagues. This is internal collaboration, and it is separate from the customer facing CaseComment object, where the IsPublished flag controls whether the customer sees the note. Keeping the two straight is important. A Chatter comment on a case is for the team. A published case comment can reach the customer. This separation is also a trap if you are careless. A Chatter comment on a record feed inherits the record sharing, so it can be visible to anyone with access to that case, including portal or Experience Cloud users in some setups. Before you treat a Chatter comment as a private aside, confirm who can actually open the parent record. The safer habit is to assume a comment on a customer record could be read by anyone with record access, and to move genuinely sensitive notes into a channel scoped only to the support team.
Rich text, attachments, and linked records
Modern Chatter comments are more than plain sentences. The Lightning publisher lets you add bold, italics, lists, and links, and the IsRichText flag on the record reflects that formatting. You can attach a file to a comment, which creates a ContentVersion behind the scenes and ties the file to the conversation. You can also drop a forward slash inside a comment to link a record. Salesforce notes you can link to up to 25 records in each post or comment, and readers without access to a linked record see a Record Not Available message. These affordances change how a comment reads. A two line reply is fine as plain text. A reply that walks through three steps is far clearer as a bullet list. A reply that references an opportunity is more useful when the opportunity is a live link rather than a pasted name. The formatting is not decoration. It is the difference between a comment people scan past and a comment people act on, especially in long group threads where dense paragraphs get ignored.
Threaded replies and reporting on engagement
Older Chatter showed every comment in one flat list under the post. Newer Chatter supports threaded comments, where a reply can hang off another comment instead of the original post. The Connect REST API exposes this with a resource that returns a threaded comment in the context of its parent comments and post. Threading keeps a busy conversation organized, because a side discussion about one point stays grouped instead of scattering through the main list. Because FeedComment is reportable, comment activity becomes a health signal for a community or a team. You can surface comments per user, the most commented posts, and comment volume by group. Community managers read these numbers to find their most active contributors and the content that actually drives discussion. A group with many posts but almost no comments is a broadcast channel, not a conversation, and that gap is usually a sign the group needs a clearer purpose or a more active owner rather than more posts.
Common pitfalls with Chatter comments
A few problems show up again and again. The first is over mentioning. When every comment tags five people, the notification stream becomes noise and users stop reacting to mentions entirely, which defeats the whole point. The second is assuming a comment on a record is private. Because the comment inherits record sharing, a casual aside on a customer case can be visible to more people than you expected. The third is edit drift. Authors can edit their own comments, but a mention notification reflects the comment as it was when the notification fired. If you substantially rewrite a comment after people were notified, readers who click through see something different from what triggered their alert, which causes confusion. The cleaner move is to post a follow up comment instead of silently rewriting. The fourth is treating likes and comments as the same signal. A like is acknowledgement with no content, while a comment carries information. Reporting on the two together hides which posts actually sparked discussion versus which merely got a passive thumbs up.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Comment, Chatter.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Comment, Chatter.
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 Chatter Comment inside the Salesforce platform?
Q2. What does @-mentioning someone in a Chatter Comment actually do?
Q3. Why use Chatter Comments instead of email for Salesforce record discussions?
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