Difference between Marketo Custom objects and Custom Fields? | Community
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A
Anonymous
March 12, 2016
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Difference between Marketo Custom objects and Custom Fields?

  • March 12, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 2531 views

So far I've only been making custom fields in Marketo and I went through Docs to try to understand the difference between the two but aside from additional functionality (one:many) I don't see a huge difference. Any insight or B2B use cases appreciated!

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Best answer by Grégoire_Miche2

Hi Christina,

Between 1:1 and 1:n, there is a huge difference. Such as not being able to have more than 1 line in an invoice or having multiple lines in a invoice. Or having 1 contract max per customer or multiple contracts per customer over time. Or 1 product max in a shopping cart and unlimited number of products in a shopping cart. All of these examples make the difference between 1Million revenue and millions of revenue

You are right saying that there is no need to use custom objects if you do not need a 1:n relationship. when a 1:1 relationship is needed, unless there is a specific need (such as access rights), adding fields should be preferred to using a custom object.

-Greg

3 replies

Grégoire_Miche2
Grégoire_Miche2Accepted solution
Level 10
March 12, 2016

Hi Christina,

Between 1:1 and 1:n, there is a huge difference. Such as not being able to have more than 1 line in an invoice or having multiple lines in a invoice. Or having 1 contract max per customer or multiple contracts per customer over time. Or 1 product max in a shopping cart and unlimited number of products in a shopping cart. All of these examples make the difference between 1Million revenue and millions of revenue

You are right saying that there is no need to use custom objects if you do not need a 1:n relationship. when a 1:1 relationship is needed, unless there is a specific need (such as access rights), adding fields should be preferred to using a custom object.

-Greg

A
Anonymous
March 12, 2016

Hi Christina

Custom object is used for integration to the other systems (e.g. existing CRM, POS, etc.).

- In Smart List we can not know Custom object was deleted or update.

- In Flow step we can not create Custom object.

I think this is a huge difference.

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
March 13, 2016

Other than what's been said, consider any object as a tab in a spreadsheet. Each tab has different attributes, tied together by a unique ID or reference.

So if I am a Customer Object, I have the usual contact info, etc. Then there's the Opportunity for 2014,2015, 2016. Each Opp can have one or more Product Objects attached back to it with an Opp ID and Product ID.

So one use case is that we have a Pricing Change Object that identifies the Product, Price Update, Contact Info, etc. Instead of using 6 fields that could be improperly updated, I can use an object and create many objects for a person each time.

Christine_Moldo
Christine_Moldo
Level 1
March 13, 2016

Hi Josh,

Do you have an example of this in real time showing all the components and how they work from end-to-end? Also, could custom objects be utilized in updating data from a list import through Boomi?

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