Feed Item
A Feed Item in Salesforce (FeedItem in the API) is the standard object that stores a single post in any Chatter feed — a user's status update, a record-feed post, a question, an announcement, or a system-generated tracked-change entry.
Definition
A Feed Item in Salesforce (FeedItem in the API) is the standard object that stores a single post in any Chatter feed — a user's status update, a record-feed post, a question, an announcement, or a system-generated tracked-change entry. Each Feed Item record holds a Body (the text content), a Type (TextPost, ContentPost, LinkPost, QuestionPost, TrackedChange, etc.), a polymorphic ParentId pointing to whichever record's feed it appears on (a User, Account, Opportunity, Case, Group, or any other Chatter-enabled object), a CreatedById and CreatedDate, an IsRichText flag, and a NetworkScope field controlling community visibility. Feed Items are the central data structure of Chatter: comments live on FeedComment records linked to a Feed Item, reactions and likes live on FeedAttachment, FeedLike, or related junction objects, and Files attached to a post are linked through FeedAttachment. Feed Items also surface as the primary record type for Salesforce's Activity timeline, where every record's Chatter feed mixes user posts with auto-generated tracked-change entries (field updates that admins have enabled for Feed Tracking).
In plain English
“A Feed Item is one post in Chatter — a status update, a question, an announcement, a comment thread starter. Every time someone posts in Chatter on their profile or on a record like an Account or Case, a Feed Item record is created. Comments and reactions on that post live on related child objects, but the post itself is a Feed Item.”
Worked example
A solutions engineer wants to flag a customer integration risk to her team. She opens the Chatter feed on the Account record for GlobalRetail Inc and posts: "Heads up — their IT team raised concerns about our SAML implementation in Friday's call. Need security to weigh in before close." Salesforce creates a Feed Item with Type = "TextPost", Body containing her message, ParentId pointing to the Account, and CreatedById set to her User Id. She @-mentions two teammates in the post, which spawns FeedComment-related notification activity. Over the next week, three teammates leave comments (FeedComment records linked to the Feed Item) and four others react with thumbs-up. The full thread — Feed Item plus all related comments and reactions — surfaces on the Account's feed for anyone with access to the record.
Why Feed Item matters
Feed Items have many sub-types beyond user-authored posts. TrackedChange entries are auto-generated when a field with Feed Tracking enabled changes value on the parent record — these surface as system-generated 'Field updated from X to Y' posts in the feed and are also Feed Item records, just with Type = TrackedChange and Body controlled by Salesforce. ApprovalPost, CallLogPost, MilestonePost, CaseCommentPost, and RecordSnapshotPost are other system-generated Feed Item types that appear in Activity timelines and Case Feed views.
Feed Items are queryable but the FeedItem object has unusual access semantics — visibility is governed by access to the parent record, not by row-level FeedItem sharing. SOQL queries against FeedItem with ParentId IN (some set of records) are subject to record-level access on those parents, which means the same query returns different results depending on the running user's permissions. This is by design (Chatter posts inherit parent visibility) but causes subtle bugs in admin tools or integrations that assume universal read access.
Feed Items can be customized with custom feed item types in Lightning, but most orgs work with the standard set. The Body field supports rich text when IsRichText = true, including @-mentions, hashtags (which become Topic links), and inline images. NetworkScope controls whether a Feed Item is visible only in the internal org, only in a specific Experience Cloud community, or across multiple networks — important for orgs running both internal Chatter and external community feeds simultaneously.
How organizations use Feed Item
Encourages reps to post Feed Items on every named Account whenever there is material news — competitive intel, exec changes, customer escalations. The Account's Chatter feed becomes the team's shared institutional memory, complementing structured fields like Stage and Close Date with unstructured context.
Configures Case Feed in the Service Console as the primary case view. Every customer email, agent reply, system-logged action, and internal comment surfaces as a Feed Item on the Case, giving agents a unified chronological view without scrolling between related lists. Email-to-Case automatically generates Feed Items for every inbound message.
Posts company-wide announcements as Feed Items in a public Chatter Group. Employees subscribe to the group to receive notifications, and the announcement Feed Items become the searchable archive of executive communications, complete with reaction and comment metrics for engagement analysis.
Trust & references
Straight from the source — Salesforce's reference material on Feed Item.
- FeedItem in Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce Developer Documentation
Discussion
Loading discussion…