Idea Themes
An Idea Theme is an admin-curated topic in Salesforce Ideas that invites community members to post ideas about a specific question, problem, or product area.
Definition
An Idea Theme is an admin-curated topic in Salesforce Ideas that invites community members to post ideas about a specific question, problem, or product area. Instead of leaving the community to submit free-form suggestions across the whole product, a theme frames a prompt (such as a question about mobile experience or a new feature area) and collects the ideas that respond to it. Each theme can carry a title, a description with images or video, a category, a status, and the zone it belongs to. Themes live on the IdeaTheme standard object, and each contributing idea points back to its theme through the IdeaThemeId field on the Idea object.
Idea Themes is a legacy feature. It still works in orgs that have it enabled, and Salesforce documents it under the legacy service features, but it is not the path Salesforce builds on for new feedback programs. Teams starting fresh today usually run idea collection inside an Experience Cloud site, or move to a dedicated feedback platform, rather than standing up classic Ideas with themes. If you already run themed campaigns on the IdeaTheme object, this entry explains how the pieces fit and what to keep in mind.
How Idea Themes structure a feedback community
The IdeaTheme standard object
Idea Themes are backed by the IdeaTheme standard object, so you can query, report, and (where the API supports it) create them like any other record. A theme record holds a Title, an optional Description that accepts formatted HTML with images and embedded video, a Category, a Status, and the zone or community it belongs to through a community reference. The object also stores creator photo URLs and a comment count, which the standard Ideas UI uses when it renders the theme page. The important link is on the child side: each Idea carries an IdeaThemeId field that points to the theme it was submitted under, and an idea belongs to at most one theme. That single parent reference is what lets you treat a theme as a container and pull every idea attached to it. Because both objects are standard, you do not build any custom schema to run a theme. You enable the feature, create the theme, and the relationship is already wired. Reports built on IdeaTheme with Idea as the related object give you idea counts, vote totals, and comment volume per theme without extra modeling work.
Themes versus free-form idea collection
A plain Ideas community collects suggestions across the entire product surface. The result tends to be noisy. The same request shows up several times, low-value asks crowd the list, and the product team has to dig for signal. A theme narrows the conversation to one question the team actually wants answered, so each contributed idea is more likely to be useful. The trade is focus for breadth. You give up the wide-open suggestion box and gain a campaign that maps to a roadmap decision. This is why themed collection works well around a release or a specific product bet, and less well as a permanent replacement for the general idea list. Many teams run both at once: a standing free-form zone for anything, plus time-boxed themes for the questions that matter this quarter. The category field on each idea adds a second axis, so within a theme you can still see which part of the product an idea touches. A report that pivots theme by category shows where the community sees opportunity inside the theme scope.
Theme status and the campaign lifecycle
A theme carries a Status that an administrator sets and changes as the campaign runs. In practice a theme starts in a draft-style state while the admin prepares the prompt and the description, moves to an active state when the community can submit and vote, and ends in a closed state once submissions stop. Closing usually lines up with a roadmap decision. Once the team has decided what to build, they stop new submissions and update the statuses on the contributing ideas to reflect the outcome, using the idea status values their org has configured, such as labels for delivered, coming soon, or declined work. The status field is also what your reports group on, so keeping it accurate matters for measuring how a campaign performed. A common mistake is leaving themes active long after the team stopped reading them. Stale themes collect duplicate ideas and erode trust, because contributors see no response. Treat the status as a promise: active means you are listening, closed means you have answered. Communicating the close, not just flipping the field, is what keeps the next campaign healthy.
Permissions, settings, and who can do what
Idea Themes is off until an administrator turns it on. In Setup you open Idea Themes Settings, click Edit, select the option to enable Idea Themes, and save. Changing that setting requires the Customize Application permission, so it is an admin task, not something a community manager does day to day. Once the feature is on, an Idea Themes tab appears where admins view, filter, moderate, and create themes from list views, and manage a theme and its related ideas from the detail page. The object permissions that gate this are specific: a user needs Read on Idea Themes to see the tab, and Create on Ideas to create a theme. That second requirement surprises people, because creating a theme depends on idea permissions rather than a separate create-theme permission. Plan your permission sets accordingly, especially if community managers without broad idea access are expected to launch themes. Members of the community do not need any of these admin permissions. They simply see the active theme inside the zone and post ideas to it, the same way they would post a standalone idea.
Reporting on theme participation
Because IdeaTheme is a standard object with a child relationship to Idea, you can build reports that measure a campaign end to end. The useful metrics are the count of ideas submitted under a theme, the total votes those ideas received, the comment volume, and the share of submitted ideas that reached a delivered or accepted status. Community managers use these numbers to judge whether a prompt worked. A theme that pulled in many high-quality, well-voted ideas validates the prompt; a theme that produced a handful of thin submissions usually signals a prompt that was too narrow, too closed, or poorly promoted. Reporting also helps you compare themes against each other so you can repeat the framing that performed and retire the framing that did not. Watch for vote inflation: a theme that was heavily promoted will naturally collect more votes than a quiet one, so compare conversion to delivered status rather than raw vote totals when you rank themes. Tie the report timeframe to the theme start and close dates so you are measuring the active window, not lifetime noise.
Deleting and restoring themes
Themes and their ideas are linked tightly enough that delete behavior cascades. Deleting an idea theme also deletes the ideas associated with it, and undeleting the theme restores those ideas along with it. This matters more than it first appears. If a community manager deletes a theme to tidy a list view, they are not just removing the prompt; they are removing every idea contributed under it, including the votes and comments the community spent effort on. Treat theme deletion as a high-impact action and prefer closing a theme over deleting it when the goal is simply to stop new submissions. If a theme is deleted by mistake, restoring it from the Recycle Bin brings the ideas back, so do not start re-creating ideas by hand before you check there. The safe pattern is to keep closed themes around as a record of what the community asked for and what the team decided. That history is useful when a similar request resurfaces later, and it shows new contributors that past campaigns led somewhere.
Where Salesforce points teams now
Classic Ideas with themes predates the modern community stack, and Salesforce now files Idea Themes under legacy service features. The concept of inviting a community to weigh in on a focused topic did not go away, but the platform you would build it on changed. New programs typically run inside an Experience Cloud site, where you can pair idea collection with knowledge, cases, and a modern theme layout, or they move to a purpose-built feedback and roadmap tool that handles voting, statuses, and customer updates with a refreshed experience. If you are maintaining an existing IdeaTheme implementation, there is no urgency to rip it out while it works, but treat it as something to plan a migration away from rather than expand. When you do migrate, map each legacy theme to whatever container the new platform uses, carry over the contributing ideas and their statuses, and keep the historical record so long-time contributors do not feel their past input was discarded. The spirit of the feature, focused crowdsourcing tied to a roadmap, is what you preserve, even when the underlying objects differ.
Enable and create an Idea Theme
Idea Themes ships disabled. An administrator enables it in Setup, then creates a theme from the Idea Themes tab. You need the Customize Application permission to change the setting, plus Read on Idea Themes and Create on Ideas to build a theme.
- Enable the feature
In Setup, use Quick Find to open Idea Themes Settings. Click Edit, select the option to enable Idea Themes, and save. This requires the Customize Application permission.
- Open the Idea Themes tab
Once enabled, the Idea Themes tab appears. From here you can view, filter, and moderate existing themes, or start a new one. Click New Idea Theme from a list view, or New from the overview page.
- Scope and define the theme
Select the zone the theme belongs to and click Continue. Set the Status, choose a Category, and enter a Title. Optionally add a Description using the HTML editor, where you can format text and embed images or video.
- Activate and promote
Save the theme, set its Status so the community can submit, and promote it inside the zone. Members then post ideas to the theme. Close the theme when the campaign ends and update the contributing ideas to reflect the decision.
The community or zone the theme lives in. Members of that zone are the audience who can see the theme and submit ideas to it.
Controls where the theme is in its lifecycle, from a draft state while you prepare it, to active while the community contributes, to closed once submissions stop.
A required classification for the theme. Ideas inside the theme can also carry their own category, giving you a second axis for reporting.
The prompt members respond to. Frame it as an open question so contributors propose ideas rather than answer yes or no.
Optional rich text that explains the prompt. The HTML editor supports formatting, images, and embedded video to make the theme page engaging.
- Creating a theme requires Create on Ideas, not a separate theme-create permission. Community managers without idea-create access cannot launch themes until you grant it.
- Deleting a theme also deletes every idea submitted under it, along with their votes and comments. Close themes instead of deleting them to preserve that history.
- An idea can belong to only one theme. If a contributor wants their idea counted in two campaigns, they must choose one theme or submit separately.
- Idea Themes is a legacy feature. Enabling it on a new org is possible where available, but for new programs Salesforce points teams toward Experience Cloud or a dedicated feedback platform.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Idea Themes in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Working with and Using Idea ThemesSalesforce
- Create and Edit Idea ThemesSalesforce
- IdeaTheme | Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Idea Themes.
- Enable Idea ThemesSalesforce
- Idea | Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Idea Themes.
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 problem do Idea Themes solve in a Salesforce Ideas community?
Q2. On which object are Idea Themes stored, and what relationship do they have to ideas?
Q3. Through which lifecycle stages does an Idea Theme move?
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