Get Started with Chatter
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Switch between Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience.
- Find and use in-app notifications.
- Update your Chatter profile.
Home, Switcher, and Bell
Chatter is a platform for collaboration in your Salesforce organization (org). Discuss business with colleagues and customers, preserve those discussions, and revisit them whenever you like. This module looks at Chatter in Lightning Experience.
If you haven’t already, log in to Trailhead and launch your Trailhead Playground by clicking Launch at the bottom of this page. Your Trailhead Playground is probably already in Lightning Experience. To confirm, or to switch from Salesforce Classic to Lighting Experience, click the View profile icon 
, and if the Options section says, “Switch to Salesforce Classic,” you’re good to go.
Anywhere you see a Chatter tab, that’s where you can find Chatter. Sometimes you see a Feed tab instead; that’s also Chatter.
The Chatter Page
Chatter has its own page, and here’s a picture of it. If you don’t see the Chatter page, go to the App Launcher, search Chatter, and select it.
Click the Chatter tab and look at the left side of the page. From there, you can access different views of your Chatter feeds.
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What I Follow combines all the Chatter feeds from all the people and things that you follow. (You can follow up to 500 things.)
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To Me combines all the Chatter posts where you’re mentioned—as long as you can access those feeds.
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Bookmarked combines all the Chatter posts that you’ve bookmarked (more on bookmarks later).
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Company Highlights uses AI to deliver a ranked view of what’s trending in your org (Top Posts). You see only the posts that you can access. Company Highlights is the default feed when you first visit the Chatter tab. After you’ve followed 10 things, your default becomes the What I Follow feed.
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My Drafts holds your saved draft posts until you’re ready to publish or delete them.
Note: Your Chatter admin must enable drafts before you can use them. When drafts are available, a post that you’re working on is saved after seven seconds. Only posts are saved as drafts. Questions and polls aren’t saved.
The next group, Streams, contains collective feeds that you create by combining Chatter feeds from all kinds of objects. Recent Groups shows a list of the top five most recently visited groups that you’re a member of.
In the center of the page is the Chatter feed. Here’s where you find the discussions between you and all the people you work with. Those discussions can happen on person’s profile, in a Chatter group, or on a particular record, such as an account.
When you need a quick way to find stuff in Chatter, two types of search are available. The global search field, in the top navigation bar, searches the entire org and returns only the results that you can access. With global search, you can limit your search to the type of object that you want to find.
The feed search field, at the top of your Chatter feed, lets you look for results from the current feed. Use feed search to find that vital bit of information that’s buried in an active thread.
You can search for files, people, groups, teams, work records, and other information.
The bell at the top of the page is the icon for in-app notifications. The number tells you how many unread notifications you have. Click the bell to see notifications for where you’re mentioned, who’s commenting on your posts, and who’s posting to your groups.
Other types of actions can also trigger notifications, such as approval requests and posts to your profile wall. Click an entry on your list of in-app notifications to navigate to the discussion where the notifying event occurred. In-app notifications show the 20 most recent notifications received in the last 90 days.
There are lots of other ways to be notified: email, daily and weekly digests, and Chatter filter options. We talk about them later in this module.
Set Up Your Chatter Profile
Start by filling out your Chatter profile.
While you’re working through the content and hands-on challenges in this module, make sure that you’re logged in to your Trailhead Playground. Using your playground ensures that you aren’t changing data in your production org or posting to your company’s Chatter feed.
First, add a profile picture. Here’s how:
- Open your profile page in the Trailhead Playground by clicking the View profile icon
and then clicking your name. In your Trailhead Playground, your name is likely to be Admin User.
Tip: There are many links in the pop-up that opens when you click the View profile icon. Use them to access your personal settings, log out, log in with your other usernames, and set your preferred display density. The comfy density has more white space than the compact density.
- Click the camera icon on the default profile image and follow the instructions to update the profile picture.
- Click the pencil icon and create an About Me statement.
- Next, click Edit on your profile page.
- Enter information about yourself, including your name, title, and contact information.
- Click Save.
Tip: Through your org’s Chatter Settings, your admin can provide you with a way to set an out-of-office message. When you set up an out-of-office message, it appears with your name wherever your name is shown.
Your profile page offers a lot more than just your own profile. It also displays lists of:
- Teams that you’re a member of (which link to the team record)
- People who you follow (with links to their profiles)
- People who follow you (with links to their profiles)
- Groups that you’re a member of (with links to those groups)
- Files that you’ve uploaded (which link to file previews)
You can add your own banner image to your profile, too. In the default banner image, click the Update Banner Photo icon 
and follow the instructions for uploading a banner image.
Now you know the basics of updating your profile. The next unit covers how to join the conversation.
Resources
- Salesforce Help: Share Updates with People in Chatter
- Salesforce Help: Chatter Profile Overview