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A
Anonymous
May 8, 2014
Question

Salesforce Sync Fields

  • May 8, 2014
  • 2 replies
  • 837 views
Can anyone explain how Marketo chooses whether to overwrite Salesforce info or Marketo info (ie both systems have data in the field, but it is different) during a sync?

I have two examples that seem to be behaving differently.
  1. Lead Score - we did some manual lead score updating in Salesforce, and all of the work was undone in the next Marketo sync.  ex. Lead score in Salesforce was updated from 100 to 20, but after the sync, it was back to 100.
  2. Date Field - we updated a date field in Salesforce for a group of leads to reset to empty.  The leads should all have synced by now, and it appears that the date field has remained empty.
Also things like Lead Status, that are continually updated by the reps, seem to be pulling new values from Salesforce rather than overwriting with the old Marketo value.

Does it have to do with the field type?  It doesn't seem like it's the most recent update because the Lead Score would have stuck with the more recent Salesforce number in that case.

Thanks in advance for any help!
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2 replies

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
May 8, 2014

Audrey,

I recommend reviewing the Marketo Sync documents.

You should NOT set Lead Score in SFDC. That is for Marketo to change, this is why it is overwritten.
 

Pretty much any field on the Lead or Contact can be written to by Marketo. The way to avoid this is to tell Marketo to block certain fields if they already have data. This is called Field Blocking. Usually you want to block Lead Source and contact details.

Read my documentation here: http://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/marketing-rockstars-guide-to-marketo/

The Date Field - what date is this for and why is it supposed to be reset? It sounds like you want it to be NULL, so it is.

Lead Status sounds like it should be updated in SFDC, which is what it is doing. Marketo can also listen for this value as well as change it. Sounds like this is fine.

Essentially, Marketo does the following every 5 minutes or so:
-Did SFDC have a change on a field on a record? If so, sync the the records if they are in both systems.
-Do I have to push over new lead or was I asked to sync over data that I have? If so, update the SFDC records. This will overwrite some data.

You can also check your Marketo User to see if the user is seeing all of the fields you want it to see and has permission (or not) to update them.
 

A
Anonymous
May 8, 2014
Thanks for taking the time Josh, I appreciate it!  Yes, each of my examples is working as it should, and normally no one should be changing lead score from Salesforce, so agreed that it is fine. But I would like to identify *why* the different fields are being treated differently during the sync.  
 
I don't see anything in the documentation or in the Admin Field Management area that distinguishes the three fields I've given as examples from each other.  Field blocking is useful, but doesn't apply in this situation because both sides already have data, just different data, and I'd like to know why the system chooses to keep one over the other. 

Other discussions have identified most recent timestamp of last update as the winner, but that did not hold true for my lead score example.  Maybe there's something unique about the lead score field?

https://community.marketo.com/MarketoDiscussionDetail?id=90650000000Pe3tAAC
 

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