Basic but very important, first of all, you have to understand Chatter messages and Chatter Conversation in Salesforce. Chatter messages let you have secure private conversations with other Chatter users. Use messages to send your colleague a question privately, or to communicate with a few selected people when a discussion isn‘t relevant to everyone you work with. Whereas Chatter conversation is consisting of messages that conversation members have sent or received.
Remember the following points for using Chatter messages
1) A private message can include up to 9 members, including yourself.
2) Messages sent will not be viewable through Chatter feed, Chatter Profile, or Global Search results.
3) You can’t delete messages or conversations.
4) An administrator with the Manage Chatter Messages permission can view and delete all users‘ messages in Chatter for example, for compliance purposes.
—> Messages are hard deleted. They aren’t sent to the Recycle Bin.
—> Deleted messages aren’t included in message search results.
—> If all messages in a conversation are deleted, the conversation doesn‘t show in My Messages and can’t be retrieved via the Chatter REST API.
5) If after reading the messages in a conversation you want to mark the conversation unread, you can do so only via the Chatter REST API, not via the user interface.
In this article, I’m going to discuss a way through which you can allow your users to delete the Chatter messages one-by-one. Let’s start with a business use case
Business Use case
Rachel Gillett is working as System administrator at Universal Containers (UC). She has received a requirement from the management, they want to allow their Sales reps (License Type: – Salesforce Platform) to delete Chatter messages one-by-one from Salesforce UI.
Solution for the above business requirement
There are a few possible solutions for the above business scenario, but we’ll use Flow and Process Builder to solve the above business requirement. As discussed earlier System administrator with the Manage Chatter Messages permission can view and delete all users‘ messages in Chatter. Business users are not allowed to delete messages or conversations. The steps to solve the above business use case are mentioned below
- Create a custom object that will be used to save the Id of Chatter message, which the users want to delete
- On creation of the record use Process Builder to trigger a Flow (Runs in System mode) and pass the Chatter message Id
- Use Flow to delete the Chatter Message
Before proceeding ahead, you have to understand ChatterMessage objects in Salesforce. It represents a message sent as part of a private conversation in Chatter. Few relevant fields are
1) Id: – Chatter Message Id
2) ConversationId: – ID of the conversation that the ChatterMessage is associated with.
Follow the below instructions to solve the above business requirement
1. First of all, grant Manage Chatter Messages permission to your user record (Via Permission Sets), to create a Flow. Otherwise, you will get the following error while building a Flow at step 3.
Flow Error
Later on, you can remove this permission set from your user record.
2. Create a custom object (Delete Chatter Message) and a field to save the Chatter Message Id, as shown in the following screenshot
Custom Object – Delete Chatter Messages
Make sure that you have marked field Chatter_Message_Id__c as required and also granted CRUD access to the respective profiles.
3. The next step is to create a Flow to delete Chatter Message. Navigate to Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | Flows
4. Click on New Flow, it will open the Flow canvas for you. Now create a Text variable VarT_ChatterMessageId to store the Chatter message Id (we will pass the Chatter Message Id through Process Builder), as shown in the following screenshot
Text Variable
5. The next step is to delete a Chatter message. To do this drag-and-drop Record Delete element (Enter the name Delete Chatter Messages) onto the canvas and map the fields according to below details
- Select object ChatterMessage
- For the criteria select Id= {!VarT_ChatterMessageId}, as shown in the below screenshot
Delete Chatter Messages
6. Finally, your Flow will look like the following screenshot
7. Save your Flow with name Delete Chatter Message and close the canvas. Don’t forget to Activate the Flow. If you want, you can now remove the permission set from your user record that you have used to grant Manage Chatter Messages permission.
Launch a Flow from Process Builder
Our next task is to create a Process Builder on the Delete Chatter Message object to launch a Flow. To create a Process Builder on the Delete Chatter Message object follow the below instructions
1. Click on Name | Setup | App Setup | Create | Workflows & Approvals | Process Builder
2. To create a new process from scratch, click on the New Button available on Process Management page. A popup will appear where you have to enter the Name (Use Delete Chatter Messages PB as name), API Name and Description as shown in the below screenshot
Define Process Properties
3. Click on Object node to add object and then select Delete Chatter Message object. For the entry criteria, Select only when a record is created, as shown in the below screenshot. Once you’re done, click on the Save button
Evaluation Criteria
4. The next task is to add Process Criteria, To do this click on Add Criteria, enter Name, Type of action and set filter conditions (In this case select No criteria—just execute the actions!) and click on the Save button as shown in the following screenshot
Process Criteria
5. The next step is to add an Immediate action to Process. Click on Add Action (Under Immediate actions), Select the type of action to create (In our case Flows), and then fill out the fields to define the action, as shown in the following screenshot
Add action – Flows
6. Once you are done, click on the Save button, it will redirect you to Process canvas. Finally, the Process will look like the following screenshot
Don’t forget to active the Process by clicking on the Activate button.
It’s time to test this feature
1) To test this application, I’m going to use the Salesforce Platform licensed user, i.e. Brendon Schaefer, as shown in the following screenshot
Salesforce Platform User
No extra permission is assigned to this user apart from Create and Read permission on the Delete Chatter Message object.
2) Brendan wants to delete a Chatter Message (i.e. What’s up?) that’s sent by System Administrator Rakesh Gupta, as shown in the following screenshot
Chatter Conversation
Now the million dollar question is how to get the Id of Chatter message (i.e. What’s up?) as a business user when you can’t run a query.
3) To get a Chatter Message Id, open the chatter message and right click on it and then select Inspect Element, as shown in the following screenshot
Select Inspect Element for a Chatter Message
4) It will open another window, from where you can copy the Chatter Message id as shown in the following screenshot
Chatter Message Id
5) Final step is to create a new record in the Delete Chatter Message object, as shown in the following screenshot
Create a new record
Once you’re done, click on the Save button.
6) Navigate to the Chatter messages and check it out now. The message (i.e. What’s up?) sent by System Administrator Rakesh Gupta gets deleted.
Final Output
Note: – You can be only able to delete those Chatter messages in which you are included, else you will get an error, i.e. There is nothing in Salesforce matching your delete criteria. It’s not applicable to the system administrator with the Manage Chatter Messages permission.
In the next article, I’m going to discuss a way through which you can allow your users to delete the complete conversation instead of deleting one-by-one Chatter Messages Getting Started with Process Builder – Part 36 (Delete Chatter Conversation)
