Enable Feed Tracking
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe feed tracking.
- Enable and configure feed tracking for an object.
Introduction to Feed Tracking
The records that you work with from day to day have lots of fields of information. For example, an account has fields for an account number, owner, name, and parent account. Often, it’s useful for your users to be notified when a field value changes—an account gets a new owner or its name is revised. That’s where feed tracking comes in. It lets you select the record fields to follow. When a tracked field changes, it triggers a Chatter post on the record's feed. Feed tracking makes it easy to see changes to critical records anytime.
Many records and fields are tracked by default, and you can add more of your own. You can track fields on User, Group, Custom, and External objects, and the following standard objects: Account, Article Type, Asset, Campaign, Case, Contact, Contract, Dashboard, Event, Lead, Opportunity, Product, Report, Solution, and Task.
In Lightning Experience, Feed Tracking must be enabled for an object for Chatter to be available to it. The only exceptions are Group, Site, and User objects; no matter whether Feed Tracking is enabled on those objects, Chatter is available to them.
Here are fields that are tracked by default when you enable feed tracking for:
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Accounts: Account Name, Account Owner
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Cases: Case Owner, Priority
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Groups: Allow Customers, Description, Access Type, Information, Information Title, Name, Owner
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Contacts: Account Name, Contact Owner, Name
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Leads: Lead Owner, Lead Status, Name
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Opportunities: Amount, Close Date, Opportunity Name, Opportunity Owner, Stage
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Users: About Me, Address, Email, Manager, Phone, Title
Sharing rules and field-level security affect the visibility of record changes in Chatter feeds. Users must be able to access a record to see notifications about changes to that record in their feeds. In Chatter, tracked field updates that are older than 45 days and have no likes or comments are deleted automatically.
Enable and Customize Feed Tracking
Let’s enable feed tracking for Contact records and add some fields to track.
- From Setup, enter
Feed Trackingin the Quick Find box, and then click Feed Tracking.
- From the list of objects, select Contact.
3. Select Enable Feed Tracking. If Enable Feed Tracking is already selected in your Trailhead Playground, it saves you a step. Feed tracking isn’t enabled by default for all objects. So remember to take this step when you’re setting up your own feed tracking.
4. Select up to 20 fields to track.
5. Click Save. After you save your changes, the number of tracked fields appears to the right of the Contact object.
When someone changes a tracked field on a Contact, the feed on the Contact is updated with a system message noting the change. People who follow the Contact also see the update in the What I Follow feed when the filter is set to All Updates.
Even though you can track up to 20 fields per object, be selective and track only the fields that are important to your users, to reduce potential noise in their feeds. Work with your users to find out which record changes really matter to them, and enable feed tracking for only those fields.
To save time and space in your feeds, multiple feed tracked change updates are bundled into a quick-reference list. Bundles are collections of feed tracked change items that you see in feeds. You can see bundles in your browser and in the new Salesforce mobile app. In Salesforce for Android and Salesforce for iOS, bundles appear only in record feeds.
Feed tracked changes (FTCs) are bundled when at least three FTCs with the same parent ID are formed within a specified time. The default time is 1,440 minutes. New FTCs are added to the same bundle, as long as the change occurs within the specified time.
If you want to change the default time, contact Salesforce Customer Support.
When someone comments on a bundled FTC, it’s removed from the bundle and placed on its own in the feed. FTCs without comments or likes are deleted and removed from the bundle after 45 days. If the number of FTCs in an existing bundle drops to two, the bundle is nonetheless preserved. If the number of FTCs in a bundle drops to one, the bundle is deleted, and the single FTC appears on its own in the feed.
Tracked feed updates that are older than 45 days and have no likes or comments are deleted automatically. The tracked feed updates no longer appear in the feed. However, if auditing is enabled for a tracked field, the tracking field audit history is still available.
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