Feed Items and Badges

Question

I'm trying to write a trigger that awards badges to people and then posts them in a chatter post.

I've found this: https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewSolution?id=000199013&language=en_US

Which is very helpful, and gets me 90% of the way to where I need to be. It lets me create thanks, and badges and post then on FeedItems.

However, what it doesn't get me is the ability to do @mention calls within the body of the post.

I've been searching and searching over the past few hours, and it seems the only way to get @mentions in there is to use the ConnectApi.ChatterFeeds class (https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_ConnectAPI_ChatterFeeds_static_methods.htm). This looked very promising, and it's not too hard to get a FeedItem with an @mention in the body.

But what appears to be missing is the ability to attach the badge using these classes.

I've been pouring over ConnectApi.FeedElementInput (https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_connectapi_input_feed_element.htm), and it seems that the "capabilities" section is what I should be using.

However, none of the capabilities on the input side (https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.apexcode.meta/apexcode/apex_connectapi_input_feed_element_capabilities.htm#apex_connectapi_input_feed_element_capabilitites) seem to be relevant to the assignment of work thanks and work badges.

When I use the connectApi to query an existing feed item, and export it to json, I get this in the capabilities section:

"enhancedLink":{
"description":"You are so great at this!", "icon":{
"height":75, "url":"myUrl", "width":75 }, "linkRecordId":null, "linkUrl":null, "title":"Awesome Selling!" }

Which is a reference to my badge. However, there is no "linkRecordId" set.

There is also no "enhancedLinkCapabilityInput" option when inputting FeedElements.

So I am somewhat at a loss, I'd like to be able to generate these badges, get then into posts, and do @mentions.

Answer 1

All of your findings are correct. I really wish that posting Thanks was supported in the ConnectApi Apex namespace so that you can directly make @mentions, but it isn't.

A couple of workarounds:

1. After you post the feed item, post a comment with @mentions using ConnectApi.ChatterFeeds.postCommentToFeedElement().
2. If the "Edit Feed Posts and Comments" feature is enabled for the users who are posting the Thanks messages, use ConnectApi.ChatterFeeds.updateFeedElement() to edit in the @mentions after you make the original post.