Post Sharing
Post Sharing is a Chatter action that takes an existing public post and republishes it to a new audience, either your own profile feed or a group feed you belong to.
Definition
Post Sharing is a Chatter action that takes an existing public post and republishes it to a new audience, either your own profile feed or a group feed you belong to. The shared copy links back to the original, so readers can jump to the source and see its comments, likes, and attachments in one place. Sharing spreads useful content past its first audience without copying and pasting. It is the Chatter equivalent of a repost. You can add your own remarks above the shared item to give it context. Salesforce still enforces record and group access, so a share never exposes a post to people who could not already see the original.
How sharing moves a post to a new feed
What a share actually does
When you share a post, Chatter creates a new feed item that points back to the original. The new item carries the original author's content plus any remarks you typed above it. The original post stays where it was, untouched. Your share is a separate entry that appears in the destination feed you picked, your profile or a group. Because the share links to the source, anyone reading it can open the original to see the full thread. Comments, likes, and the original attachments live on the source post, not on your copy. That design keeps one canonical conversation instead of scattering replies across duplicates. In Lightning Experience, the link is live: when the original author edits their post, your shared version reflects the edit because it still references the same source. This is the main reason a share is not a copy. You are pointing more people at one post, not duplicating it. If the original is later deleted, the shared reference has nothing left to display, since the content it pointed to is gone.
Share to your profile vs share with a group
Chatter gives you two real destinations and one link option. Sharing to your own profile pushes the post into your profile feed, where your followers see it in their own feeds. In Salesforce Classic this option appears as My Followers under the Share menu, and you can share only to your own profile, never to someone else's. Sharing with a group posts the item, plus your remarks, into that group's feed. The control reads A Group in Classic and Share with Group in Lightning Experience. You type the group name and pick it from the matches. You can only share into a public group or a group you already belong to, which keeps private spaces private. There is also a link option. In Classic you can share a post through email or instant message, and in Lightning you use Copy Link to grab a URL that opens the post's detail view. The link route is handy when the recipient is outside Chatter or you just want to reference the post somewhere else.
Which posts can and cannot be shared
Only a regular, public Chatter post is shareable. Salesforce blocks sharing for several item types so the action cannot leak restricted content. You cannot share feed-tracked changes, which are the automatic updates Chatter posts when a tracked field changes on a record. You cannot share custom feed items such as approval requests, dashboard snapshots, or case interaction entries. Posts that live in a record feed are not shareable from the share menu, and posts in private groups stay inside those groups. Private groups that contain external users, unlisted groups, and archived groups are all off limits as share destinations. The reasoning is consistent: a share should never widen visibility beyond what the original already allowed. One platform difference is worth remembering. In Salesforce Classic, files attached to the original travel with the shared post, but in Lightning Experience attachments are not carried into the shared copy. If the attachment matters, point people to the original instead of relying on the share to bring the file along.
Sharing never bypasses security
A common worry is that sharing might hand a post to someone who should not see it. It does not. Chatter respects the same record sharing and group membership rules that govern the original post. Post visibility is decided by where the content lives. A post on your profile is visible to people who follow you and to internal users who can view your profile. A post in a group inherits that group's visibility, whether public, private, or unlisted. A post tied to a record can only be seen by users who have access to that record. When a record changes, only people with permission to see the record see the update in a feed. Because anyone with access to a post also has access to its comments, the whole thread stays gated together. So when you share, you are widening distribution only within the boundary the original already set. If you share a profile post to a group, group members still see it through the share, but the underlying access model has not changed. Sharing is an amplification tool, not a permission override.
A worked example
Say a colleague posts a clear write-up of a new returns process on their profile, and you want your regional support team to read it. Open the post in your Chatter feed and click Share. To put it in front of one team, choose Share with Group, type the name of your support group, and select it from the results. Add a short remark like, please read before Monday, then click Share. The post now appears in that group's feed with your note on top, and it links back to the original where the discussion continues. If instead you wanted your followers to see it, you would pick the profile option and the item would land in your profile feed for anyone who follows you. Suppose the colleague later fixes a typo in their original post. In Lightning Experience your shared version updates automatically because it references the same source. If a teammate is not in Chatter at all, you would use Copy Link and paste the URL into an email so they can open the post detail view directly. Comments your group adds stay on the original thread, keeping one conversation.
Where sharing fits in a Chatter program
Sharing is a small feature with an outsized effect on how information travels in an org. Healthy Chatter cultures use it to amplify announcements, surface good work to a wider group, and pass along useful answers that would otherwise sit in one feed. Because the share keeps attribution to the original author, it doubles as recognition. The person who wrote the post gets credit when their work spreads. From an adoption standpoint, sharing rewards quality posting. People write more carefully when they know a strong post can reach the whole company through a few shares. Encourage it deliberately. Ask group owners to share key updates into their groups rather than rewriting them, which keeps the conversation in one place and avoids duplicate threads. Pair sharing with following and group membership so the amplified content actually reaches active feeds. One caution: sharing widely is not a substitute for posting in the right place to begin with. If a message is meant for everyone, an official announcement or a broad group post is cleaner than a chain of profile shares.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Share a Chatter PostSalesforce
- Share a Chatter Post with a GroupSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Post Sharing.
- Share a Chatter Post to Your ProfileSalesforce
- Post VisibilitySalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Post Sharing.
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 action does Post Sharing perform in Salesforce Chatter?
Q2. What can a user add when sharing someone else's Chatter Post?
Q3. Why would someone use Post Sharing on a valuable Chatter Post?
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