A topic is a named channel that stores published messages for a period you choose, so that any number of flows can read them independently. This article covers creating a topic, choosing a retention window, editing and renaming a topic, finding out what uses it, and deleting it. Manage topics from Resources > Topics, and you need manage access to create or change one.
Before you begin
- The Topics license must be enabled for your account.
- To create or edit topics account-wide, you need to be the account owner, an administrator, or a Manage All user. To manage the topics registered to a specific integration, you need manage access on that integration. See Grant access to topics.
- Topics are scoped to one environment. A topic you create in a non-production environment doesn't exist in production.
Create a topic
- Go to Resources > Topics.
- Select + Create topic.
- Enter a Name. Names are labels, not identifiers — they don't need to be unique, and you can change a name later without breaking anything.
- Optionally, enter a Description to tell other builders what the topic carries.
- Choose a Retention period. The default is 7 days. See Choose a retention window.
- Select Save.
The topic is available immediately. You can now publish to it and subscribe flows.
Note: Topics have no schema. Any JSON payload up to 1 MB is accepted, and there is nothing else to configure before you publish.
You can also create a topic without leaving the flow builder: the topic picker on a publish step or a topic listener includes an inline Create topic option. A topic created that way is registered to the integration automatically when you save the step.
Choose a retention window
Retention controls how long the topic keeps each message. Options range from 1 hour to 90 days:
1 hour · 6 hours · 24 hours · 3 days · 7 days · 14 days · 30 days · 60 days · 90 days
Messages are deleted after this period, whether or not they have been read.
Retention is what makes subscribing flows recoverable. A flow that is disabled or failing can catch up on anything still inside the window — and anything older is gone.
Warning: Set retention longer than your worst-case flow downtime. If a subscribing flow is off, disabled, or erroring for longer than the retention period, the messages it hadn't yet processed are deleted and can't be recovered. A weekend outage against a 24-hour window loses the weekend.
Use the short end of the menu — 1 hour and 6 hours — only for data that genuinely stops mattering that quickly, such as high-volume telemetry you wouldn't replay. When you are unsure, keep the 7-day default.
Retention periods longer than the ceiling licensed for your account appear disabled.
Edit a topic
You can change a topic's name, description, and retention at any time.
- Go to Resources > Topics.
- Select the topic name, or select Actions (…) on its row and then Edit topic.
- Change the Name, Description, or Retention.
- Select Save.
Renaming is always safe. Publish steps, listeners, and API calls reference the topic's ID, not its name, so nothing needs to be updated after a rename.
If you don't have manage access on the topic, the fields are read-only.
Note: A topic can be registered to several integrations at once, and editing it affects all of them — the same as editing a shared connection. The edit view shows which integrations the topic is registered to.
Shorten retention
When you choose a shorter retention period, a warning appears as soon as you change the field:
Shrinking retention from {{old}} to {{new}} purges messages older than the new window. Subscriptions can no longer reach past it.
Messages older than the new window become unreachable. Any subscription that hadn't yet read them can't recover them.
⚠ VERIFY: Whether shortening retention deletes the affected messages immediately or lets them age out was an open engineering question at the time of writing. The customer-facing promise — that the messages become unreachable — holds either way, but confirm before publishing if you want to state the timing.
Find out what uses a topic
Before you change retention on a shared topic or try to delete one, check what depends on it.
- Go to Resources > Topics.
- Select Actions (…) on the topic's row, then select Used by.
The view lists the publish steps and listeners that reference the topic, the same as the used-by view for a connection.
Review a topic's audit log
Configuration changes are recorded per topic.
- Go to Resources > Topics.
- Select Actions (…) on the topic's row, then select View audit log.
The log records who changed what and when, for topic creation, name and description edits, retention changes, purges, and deletion.
Delete a topic
Deleting a topic requires manage access, and it is deliberately gated.
- Go to Resources > Topics.
- Select Actions (…) on the topic's row, then select Delete.
- Confirm the deletion.
If the deletion is blocked
A topic can't be deleted while any flow references it. If a publish step or a listener still points at the topic, the dialog explains the block and lists the flows:
This topic can't be deleted while flows use it. {{count}} flows still reference it — remove their publish steps and listeners first.
Select View flows to open the list, then remove the publish steps and listeners in those flows. This works the same way as deleting a connection.
A topic must also be deregistered from every integration before you can delete it. See Grant access to topics.
What happens when a topic is deleted
A deleted topic goes to the account Recycle bin, where it stays for 30 days before it is purged automatically. You can restore it during that window, and it comes back with the same topic ID.
Warning: A topic's retention clock keeps running while it sits in the Recycle bin. The two timers are independent — so a topic restored after longer than its retention period comes back configured correctly but with no messages. Restoring a topic doesn't restore messages that aged out while it was deleted.
To clear a topic's messages without deleting the topic itself, purge it instead. See View and purge a topic's message history.
Find a topic
The topic list supports searching and sorting:
- Search topics matches against both name and description text.
- Sort by Name or Last updated.
Each row shows the topic name, a note icon for the description, Last updated, Retention, a View messages action, and row Actions. Select the note icon to read a description, and to edit it inline if you have manage access.