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We are about to conduct a massive migration which will involve moving data from one object to another and even changing the relationships among objects. It will require us to export and re-import the data. We would like to keep the Chatter feeds with their related records if possible. I have been told it is possible by exporting the feed data, and then some how re-matching the Parent ID of it to the new Record ID of the newly re-imported record through a Vlookup procedure on a spreadsheet.

My questions are such :

  1. How can I access the Feed data ? I've never associate it with a specific object so I wouldn't even know how to go about exporting it.

  2. Has anybody ever done this ? Could you give some insight\feedback\advice ?

I really appreciate your time and help.

Thank you.

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    While I have never personally done this. I know you can access the data through the FeedItem object. It seems to me that you could just export the FeedItem objects and fill in Ids for the desired related records in the 'ParentId' field
    – Chris Duncombe
    Sep 16, 2013 at 18:23
  • So, would I just export FeedItem ? I see all of the other 'Feed' objects available as well through Data Loader which are apparently object-specific such as Feed : MyCustomObject (MyCustomObject__Feed). I'm wondering how they would differ from the FeedItem data and if I would need to use those when dealing with feed associated with specific records...?
    – Zoom_v
    Sep 16, 2013 at 18:41
  • Hello, @Zoom_v, just curious whether you would be able to post an update about how the project went and how you actually ended up completing the migration. I think the data structure is a bit more complex than just the FeedItem object.
    – Marty C.
    Nov 12, 2014 at 1:12
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    @MartyC. To tell you the truth I can't really remember the details of it all (it's been more than a year). I think I ended up able to export through Data Migrator using the FeedItem object. I put a field in the parent object named OriginalParent__c which had a value of the RecordID. I then exported the parent data. I then imported that parent data back into SF into the new object. I then re-exported it. Then built a pivot table to cross reference the FeedItem records' ParentID value with the new records' OriginalParent__c value. I then made the value of the RecordID of those records the...
    – Zoom_v
    Nov 13, 2014 at 3:47
  • ...new value of the ParentID for the FeedItem records. I then imported the FeedItem records. And it worked - the Chatter data appeared in all of the corresponding Parent records in the new objects. I might be leaving out a step or two here. Like I said, it's been a year+. Good luck !
    – Zoom_v
    Nov 13, 2014 at 3:50

1 Answer 1

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I tried researching the difference between the Object_feed object and the FeedItem object with little success. The one thing that did come up consistently is that the object_feed is only available for objects that you have enabled feed tracking on.

According to the following blog post, the data is captured in both the FeedItem object as well as the Object__feed object, assuming you have enabled feed tracking on that object. There's also a very good visual in the post that should help.

http://simplysfdc.blogspot.com/2013/03/query-chatter-feed-and-how-it-structure.html

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  • Thank you very much for your help and time Dunc. I really appreciate it !
    – Zoom_v
    Sep 17, 2013 at 12:48
  • No problem. Glad to help
    – Chris Duncombe
    Sep 17, 2013 at 13:37
  • Just to give you an update : I created duplicates of my master records through exporting and INSERTing through DataLoader. I then exported all of my FEEDITEM data. I then did an export of the NEW master records in order to get their RecordID's. I then put those RecordID's into a column of my FEEDITEM spreadsheet called NEWPARENTID and did an INSERT with the feed data, mapping the NEWPARENTID column to the PARENTID field in a FEEDITEM object. It worked, no problem. Awesome !
    – Zoom_v
    Sep 18, 2013 at 16:04
  • Great. Glad to hear
    – Chris Duncombe
    Sep 18, 2013 at 16:05
  • However,I then wanted to see if I could do an UPSERT and map the already existing FeedItems to the NEWPARENTID,using the RecordID as the external ID, effectively MOVING the records to the new object instead of creating duplicates to the newly created master record.But I couldn't do it.I kept getting errors.I guess for some reason it was unable to map the RecordID's properly?Or is that just not possible?Any thoughts ?Also, ftr -I've confirmed that the FEEDITEM object has ALL of the feed data, but if you want to specify only a certain object's feeds to export you can use the object__feed object.
    – Zoom_v
    Sep 18, 2013 at 16:10

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