Vote, Reply
A Vote on a Reply was an up or down endorsement one member cast on a single answer.
Definition
A Vote on a Reply was an up or down endorsement one member cast on a single answer. Salesforce documents a Reply as an answer to a question in an answers zone, which is older than Chatter Answers. The Answers feature carried this voting first.
Chatter Answers is retired, but there was no global off switch. Support and updates ended in Spring '18. The retirement article says customers may keep the feature until their subscription term ends. The active retirements list gives the timing as Order End Date.
A legacy org inside its term can still have a working vote button.
In plain English
“Picture an old help forum where people answered each other's questions. Readers gave each answer a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Salesforce stopped supporting that forum years ago, and almost every org has lost it since. The old counts just sit in the records.”
Worked example
An admin at a mid-market software company refreshes a sandbox from a 2015-era org. In it sits a Reply on a Question titled Export fails after SSO change. UpVotes read 14, DownVotes 1, VoteTotal 15, and the parent Question's BestReplyId points somewhere else. This org lost Chatter Answers when its old contract lapsed, so nothing here can change those numbers. A sister org still inside its subscription term would be a different story. The admin exports both rows and rewrites the 14-vote answer as a Knowledge article.
From vote tallies to a single Best Answer
How the vote actually worked
Voting sat on the Reply record, not on the question. Salesforce stored UpVotes and DownVotes counters plus a VoteTotal that summed both. The Vote object carried a Type picklist of Up and Down, so a down vote was recorded, not just missing support. The tally was a crowd signal separate from the asker's Best Answer pick.
Two dates, only one a release
The Spring '17 release notes announced a Winter '18 retirement. The Winter '18 notes moved that line to Spring '18. Support and updates stopped there, though members could still post, answer, comment, and read old threads. That is an end of support, not a shutoff. Removal runs on Order End Date, so the feature lapses when a contract does.
The objects Salesforce never deleted
Vote is still in the current object reference, defined as a vote on a Knowledge Article, Idea, or Reply. The docs then argue with themselves. Parent's Refers To list names Idea, IdeaComment, KnowledgeArticle, and Solution, with no Reply. Another note says SOQL has returned Reply votes since API version 17.0. Trust the counters on the answer record. Since Summer '20, only authenticated users can reach the object.
What you use instead now
Chatter Questions is the supported pattern. It ranks with one Best Answer, copied to the top of the thread. While someone types, it surfaces similar questions and Knowledge articles. No tally, so nothing maps cleanly onto an old VoteTotal. One catch: from Summer '26 Chatter is off by default in new orgs, so enable it under Setup, Chatter Settings.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Vote | Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Reply | Object Reference for the Salesforce Platform (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Spring '17 Release Notes: Chatter Answers Retires in Winter '18 (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Winter '18 Release Notes: Chatter Answers is No Longer Supported in Spring '18 (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Chatter Is Turned Off by Default in New Orgs (Summer '26) (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Active Product and Feature Retirements (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Vote, Reply.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Vote, Reply.
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. Spring '18 ended support and updates for Chatter Answers. What decides when a legacy org actually loses it?
Q2. Which fields on the Reply object held the vote tally?
Q3. You inherit an org full of old Chatter Answers threads. What do you do with the vote counts?
Discussion
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