Like, Chatter Answers
Like, Chatter Answers was the endorsement action inside Chatter Answers, the retired Salesforce self-service Q&A community.
Definition
Like, Chatter Answers was the endorsement action inside Chatter Answers, the retired Salesforce self-service Q&A community. Clicking it recorded an up vote on the question or reply rather than a Chatter like.
The counts surfaced as UpVotes on the Question record and as UpVotes, DownVotes and VoteTotal on the Reply record. There was no separate Chatter Answers object behind the button.
It is retired. Chatter Questions replaced it, and new orgs stopped receiving Chatter Answers in Summer '16. Salesforce times the wind-down by subscription end, not by a release. You meet the term now only in inherited orgs and old study guides.
In plain English
“Picture an old customer help forum where you could give a thumbs up to a question or an answer that helped. That button was this. Salesforce switched the forum off years ago, so the button went with it.”
Worked example
A payroll software vendor ran a Chatter Answers zone for its small-business customers. A user posted "Direct deposit file rejected by the bank" and drew four replies. Twenty-six people clicked Like on the question, so Question.UpVotes read 26. One reply collected 12 up votes and 3 down votes: Reply.UpVotes 12, Reply.DownVotes 3, Reply.VoteTotal 15. The asker marked that reply best, which wrote its Id into Question.BestReplyId. Years later the vendor ran the Q&A Migration app, the zone stopped rendering, and Chatter Questions took over.
What the like recorded, and what happened to it
Questions and replies were scored differently
The asymmetry is the part worth remembering. A Question record carried UpVotes and nothing else, so a question could only be pushed up. A Reply, inherited from the older Answers product, carried UpVotes, DownVotes and VoteTotal, so an answer could go either way. The Vote object's own description names Knowledge Article, Idea and Reply, never Question.
Why the dates in old runbooks disagree
Two documents point different ways. The Answers Implementation Guide still carries a note on nearly every page: Answers will no longer be supported as of the Spring '18 release. The note is about Answers, cross-referencing end of support for Chatter Answers. The live retirement article is gentler, letting existing customers run until their subscription term ended. The active retirements list settles it: Order End Date, no release named.
The data warning worth reading twice
The official wording is blunt. Community pages configured to show answers data stop appearing. Data may be lost if it is not migrated to Chatter Questions. Salesforce points at the Q&A Migration app. It covers three cases: a portal moved to a new site, a community left in place, and an internal feed.
Ghosts left behind in the schema
The UI is gone, the API is not. Question, Reply and Vote are all still documented. Question.Origin still lists Chatter Answers as a source, and three Reply creator fields still say Chatter Answers must be enabled. ChatterAnswersSettings is still a documented metadata type carrying enableChatterAnswers. Treat it as archaeology, not configuration you can revive.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Like, Chatter Answers.
- Vote | Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Question | Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Reply | Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- ChatterAnswersSettings | Metadata API Developer Guide (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Like, Chatter Answers.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. What did clicking Like in Chatter Answers actually record?
Q2. How does Salesforce's current retirements list time the end of Chatter Answers?
Q3. You inherit an org holding old Chatter Answers data, and the business wants customers to endorse helpful answers again. What do you build on?


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