Salesforce Spring14 – Migrating Public Tags to Topics

Why Use Topics on Records

Tags were a feature that allowed users to place mini-notes on records. The tags displayed at the top of the records and they were useful to return a list of all records using that tag. There were limitations to the tag system. You could not report on tags or create list views. Exporting your list of records was a challenge. Here’s what we can do with Topics on records that we could not do with tags.

• Create List Views – a new criteria “Topics” is available to create list views of records that include or exclude a topic
• Report on Topics – We can report on topics. This needs a shot in the arm for records vote here
• Global Search Friendly
• They’re just cooler

There’s some nice bonuses here. Plus, Salesforce is likely to continue developing Topics.

Let’s Migrate Already

There are four easy steps to getting your Public Tags migrated to Topics.

1. Enable Topics for each Object
2. Install Migration Tool
3. Migrate Public Tags

Wait Brian! I can hear you shout. That’s only 3 items. You’re right. The fourth is: Do this is Sandbox first. This is an unmanaged package. I trust Mike Telow’s coding skills, but everyone can make mistakes. I recommend always installing ANY AppExchange package in a Sandbox for review and testing first.

Enable Topics

Enabling Topics is very easy. Under the Customize Menu we expand Topics and Select “Topics of Objects.” We have a list of Objects in our org and next to each object a pick list to either Disable (Default) or Enable Topics. Please note that Enabling Topics for the object will remove Public Tags. Personal Tags will still be available.

Enabling Topics

Install Migration Tool

You can find Mike Telow’s tool here: https://github.com/mtetlow/Salesforce-Public-Tag-To-Chatter-Topics-Migration

Installation is very easy. The link to install the package is: https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04ti0000000H2Cy to install in your sandbox, simply replace login.salesforce.com with your Sandbox instant information. For example: CS15.salesforce.com

**Update 8/22/2014 — Note the link to the package has change since this blog post. There was an update to Mike’s code which required a new package. I strongly recommend you check out Mike’s github link posted above which will have the most updated links. /End Update ****

From here simply review the package details and proceed to steps 1 through 3. I recommend only installing for Admins. Who else will be doing the migration other than the Admin?

Once the app is installed, we can do the migration.

Migrate these Tags Already

I have two accounts with Tags. Here’s an example of both in one screenshot. The top part I’m adding Tags and the bottom is the view of Tags already on the record.

These are the two records we’ll be migrating their Public Tags to topics. First step is to go to the Migration Tool’s page. This is something we have to manually enter.

• Click on your Home Tab.
• Delete “/home/home.jsp”
• Append “/Apex/tagMigration”

So your URl should now look something like: CS7.Salesforce.com/apex/tagMigration  and you should be looking at a page like this:

There’s lots of information on this page. It’ll display all the areas Tags are currently available. The most important item is the “Start Public Tags to Topics Migration” button at the bottom. Click this button. When running in Sandbox, make sure the “Access to Send Email” is set to “All Email.” Any other setting will cause an error and the migration will not run. This is only an issue with Sandbox. You can see your Access level under “Email Administration” -> “Deliverability.”

You will receive an email once the migration is completed. Here’s what my sample accounts looked like once it was completed:

We’re done! Look at those topics, so very pretty.

The last thing to do is uninstall the package. That’s right. Once we’re done migrating all our public tags there’s no reason to keep the package in our org any longer. We like nice clean orgs right?

Very simple and easy process to migrate all your public tags over to topics. Are you planning on using Topics on records? How will you be using them? Love to hear from you in the comments!