Automation Champion

Organize Records

Till date we used topics in Chatter to organize post by common themes. In Spring’14 release Salesforce.com comes with a new feature called as “Topics for Objects“, So we can organize records by using topics same as Chatter.Topics helps to organize records in a better way and make search easier for you. To use  “Topics for objects” Chatter is not required to enable. For exiting organization “Topics for objects” aren’t enabled for any objects by default. Administrators must choose which objects to enable. It’s available in all editions. For organizations created after the Spring ’14 release, topics are by default enabled for all available standard objects. Administrators must choose which custom objects to enable. These organizations don’t have public tags on records.

Note:-  Enabling topics for an object disables public tags on records of that object type, and the public tags aren’t migrated to topics. Personal tags aren’t affected. If administrators disable topics for an object, all public tags on records of that object type are restored.

Enable Topics for Objects

System administrator can enable “Topics for objects” for accounts, assets, campaigns, cases, contacts, contracts, events, leads, opportunities, tasks and custom objects. to do that follow the below steps:-

1) Click on Name | Setup | Customize | Topics | Topics for Objects.
2) Select an object.
3) Select Enable topics for that Object.

Enable Topics for Objects

4) Next step is select field for topic suggestions. There are two ways for this.
a) Use topic suggestions from default fields. For this select “Use topic suggestions from default fields” check-box.
b) Another way is you can select fields for suggestion. For this Unchecked “Use topic suggestions from default fields” check-box and select field from list.

Fields for suggestions

5) Click on Save.

Note:- For custom object you have select the fields that you want to use for topic suggestions.

Add Topics to Records

Now we are ready to use “Topics for objects” for account records as I already enabled it.To do that follow the below step:-

1) Go to the record detail pages and click on “Click to add topics” link top of the page under the record name.

Click to Add topics

2) It will Open a Topic Editor, Where you can Enter/Type multiple topics separated by comma(,) or Select topics from the list of suggestions.Commas ( , ) and closing square brackets ( ] ) automatically end a topic.

Add Topics

3) When you’re done adding topics, click Done or press Enter.

Note:- A records can have up to 100topics.

Use Topics for search

You can use topics to filter your list view . In list view create a new view and in filter criteria use topics as shown in below image.

List View

Click on Save button and it will show all records that tagged with same topics (That you mentioned in filter criteria).

List View search result

Point to remember :-  If you already added topics to records and want to add/Remove topics then click on “Topics” link top of the page under the record name.

Add and Remove Topics