Categorize feedback at scale with themes

Jake Sawyer

Updated June 18, 2026 19:39

A theme is a user-defined category that groups feedback together based on filters. You can create themes from a template or from scratch, and once set, any feedback that matches a theme's filters will be added to that theme. This makes them great for discovering and analyzing feedback trends in workspaces with many feedback entries.

Themes are ultimately designed for:

Product leaders to track strategic initiatives.
Product managers to discover and validate product opportunities.
CX leaders to segment feedback and identify trends across user journeys.

Note: Themes used to be called topics. The name was changed in a recent update.

Creating a theme

Note: Only admins and makers can create and manage themes.

To create a theme:

From the Main menu, click Insights > Themes.
Click Create > Manual if you want to configure the theme from scratch, or click Create > Template to choose from a variety of themes which you can tailor as needed. Either way, the new theme's sidebar will open.
Give the theme a name.
Click Add filter to add a filter to this theme. You can add as many as you like. Only feedback which matches the filters you set here will be assigned to the theme. For example, adding a Content filter will allow you to specify keywords that might appear in the text of feedback.

Note: Every theme has one default filter that limits the result to feedback less than a year old. You can click on this filter to change it if you wish.
(Optional) Assign a parent theme under which to nest this theme. The scope of a nested theme is limited to feedback that matches its parent theme.
(Optional) Click Preview to see the feedback that will be assigned to this theme before you create it.
When you're done, click Save. The theme will begin collecting feedback right away, though it may take a few minutes before it's ready to use if your workspace has a lot of feedback.

Editing a theme

To edit a theme:

From the Main menu > Insights > Themes, click on a theme to open its details sidebar.
Make changes to the theme's title, filters, or parent field.
When you're happy with the changes, click Save. The theme will reconfigure its collection of feedback based on your edits, which may take a few minutes. (Changing only a theme's name will not cause it to regenerate.)

Note: When a theme is reconfigured after an edit, it will overwrite any manual addition or removal of feedback from that theme, so we recommend waiting to do manual feedback curation until after you're happy with the base definition. See Manually adding and removing theme feedback below for details.

Deleting a theme

Note: Deleting a theme will not delete the feedback attached to the theme. Your feedback is safe!

To delete a theme:

From the Main menu > Insights > Themes, click on a theme to open its details sidebar.
Click ••• More actions at the top of the sidebar, then click Delete.
Confirm that you want to delete the theme.

Theme feedback

All the feedback that belongs to a theme is collected in the Feedback tab of a theme's sidebar.

From the Feedback tab, you can:

Click on feedback to open its sidebar, just as if you'd done so from an insights board.
Click on the user or company of feedback to view that data in a sidebar.
Hover over feedback and click Link to hierarchy to see a list of all the items the feedback is linked to. You can click an item in the list to open its sidebar.)
Hover over feedback and click Copy link to easily share the feedback with another workspace member.
Hover over feedback and click Remove feedback to remove it from the theme, in case it doesn't belong there.
Hover over feedback and click the checkbox beside its name to add it to your bulk selection. You can use the buttons that appear along the bottom of the sidebar to Deselect all or Select all loaded feedback, remove all selected feedback from the theme, or link all selected feedback to a product hierarchy item.

Manually adding and removing theme feedback

It's also possible to add feedback to (or remove it from) a theme manually. You might do this when you find feedback that should be assigned to a theme but wasn't caught by the filter, or when you find some that seems unrelated to the theme after a closer look.

To manually add feedback to a theme:

Open a feedback sidebar by clicking on it anywhere it appears (for instance, in the Feedback tab of a theme, or from any insights board).
Click + Theme.
Choose a theme from the dropdown menu.

To manually remove feedback from a theme:

Open a feedback sidebar by clicking on it anywhere it appears (for instance, in the Feedback tab of a theme, or from any insights board).
Hover over a theme and click the Remove button.

You can also remove feedback from a theme on the Feedback tab of any theme; see Theme feedback above.

Best practices

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of themes:

Start simple. Create a few themes tied to business initiatives or segments.
Be patient. It may take a couple minutes to collect feedback when you create a new theme. Good time to stretch!
Look for patterns. Themes pair well with the Analytics page. Use them together to discover important information about your products.
Link in bulk. Use themes to group similar insights together, then select them all and link them to relevant items in your hierarchy to create insights. This is much faster than reading through every individual piece of feedback.