Idea
A Salesforce object (part of the Ideas feature) that represents a suggestion posted by a user in an Ideas community or zone, which other users can vote on and comment on to help organizations crowdsource innovation.
Definition
A Salesforce object (part of the Ideas feature) that represents a suggestion posted by a user in an Ideas community or zone, which other users can vote on and comment on to help organizations crowdsource innovation.
In plain English
“An Idea is a Salesforce object that represents a suggestion posted by a user in an Ideas community. Other users can vote and comment on it. It's how organizations crowdsource innovation, getting feedback and suggestions from customers, partners, or employees.”
Worked example
Quill Insurance runs an Idea Exchange community on Experience Cloud where its 18,000 broker partners submit and vote on suggested platform improvements. Each submission becomes an Idea record - "Add bulk-quote import," "Allow multi-policy bundles in the renewal form" - with vote counts, comments, and a status field the product team updates as the suggestion is reviewed, planned, in-progress, or shipped. The product manager filters the Idea list by vote count weekly to identify what brokers care about most, and replies publicly so submitters see their suggestions are taken seriously. What used to be 200 disconnected support tickets a month is now a transparent, voteable backlog.
Why Idea matters
An Idea in Salesforce is an object that represents a user-submitted suggestion in an Ideas community or zone. Users post ideas, other users vote up or down on them, and comments capture discussion. Ideas surface the most popular suggestions through the voting mechanism, helping organizations identify what their community cares about most. The Ideas feature has been used historically for crowdsourcing product feedback from customers.
Ideas as a standalone Salesforce feature is largely legacy now. Salesforce's own community ideation has moved to the Trailblazer Community Ideas (formerly IdeaExchange). For internal innovation programs and customer feedback gathering, modern alternatives include Experience Cloud with custom innovation pages, third-party innovation platforms, and dedicated voice-of-customer tools. The Ideas object still exists in Salesforce orgs but isn't actively developed and isn't typically the right choice for new ideation programs.
How to create Idea
Ideas are the Salesforce Ideas community feature — users submit suggestions, others vote, top-voted ones get implemented. It's most often used in Customer Communities ("Help us improve our product"). Creating an Idea is straightforward; the work is configuring the Zones and visibility.
- Confirm Ideas is enabled
Setup → Ideas Settings → Enable Ideas. Off by default in newer orgs.
- Configure at least one Idea Zone
Setup → Ideas Zones → New. Zones group Ideas by topic / product area.
- Open the Ideas tab
App Launcher → Ideas.
- Click New
Top-right of the list.
- Set Title and Description
Title is the headline; Description is the full pitch.
- Pick Zone and Categories
Zone is required. Categories are picklist values for filtering.
- Save
Idea is created. Other users can comment, vote up, or vote down.
Required. The headline.
Required. Determines visibility and grouping.
- Ideas is a legacy feature that Salesforce has de-emphasized in favor of Salesforce Communities / Experience Cloud. New orgs may not see Ideas in the App Launcher by default — must be enabled in Setup.
- Zones gate visibility. An Idea in a Zone the user can't see is invisible to them — they can't even discover it via search.
- Vote tallies (PromotedScore) drive default sort. Spam votes from bots can skew rankings — moderate Ideas if you have a public-facing community.
How organizations use Idea
Helps clients evaluate whether legacy Ideas implementations should migrate to modern alternatives like custom Experience Cloud pages.
Treats the Ideas feature as legacy and recommends modern third-party innovation platforms for new feedback programs.
Maintained their old Ideas community for years before migrating to a dedicated voice-of-customer platform that better fit their needs.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is an Idea in Salesforce?
Q2. Is the Ideas feature still actively developed?
Q3. What's a modern alternative for ideation programs?
Discussion
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