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Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 5, 2016

Adding Marketo Fields to Salesforce

  • August 5, 2016
  • 28 replies
  • 14953 views

Included in this article

Overview

Do you need to create fields in Salesforce and have them connect to specific fields in Marketo like for Lead Score or Acquisition Program? If so, this document will take you right to the instructions on how to get that done!

Step by Step Directions for all Salesforce Editions

Adding Custom Marketo Fields to Salesforce

Video Overview

Here's a video tutorial of the entire process that should make it easy to follow along: Salesforce Connector Setup

Enjoy!

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28 replies

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
December 15, 2016

Hi @chris fiegel​,

MSI won't be affected at all, except for an extremely minor way that hardly ever gets used. The MLM package is the one to uninstall, not the MSI package. The MSI package stars and flames still work just the same as they had before. So no worries on that part. Uninstalling the old package and deleting the fields won't have any affect on MSI displaying any of that info (it uses a different line of communication back to Marketo on the back end).

The idea to change the friendly labels is a good one--it's one I've seen others do that works well to prevent confusing the new fields with the new ones. Definitely recommend that, but it won't change the names of the fields inside of MSI, only the names used in your SFDC page layouts. As for the page layouts themselves, hiding/removing the old fields certainly works. Some folks will do that if they want to keep the old field data for reporting purposes but don't want the clutter in their SFDC. But since uninstalling the MLM package and deleting the fields won't affect MSI, if you don't need the old field data, I'd just delete them.

Hope that helps!

-Mike

January 12, 2017

I apologize if I am missing this, but is there documentation on a naming convention for the new fields?  I saw a question above "Is it necessary to include "mkto71_" before every field name?"

How did this user know to ask such a question?  And how does Marketo know to initiate the drip process to backfill the fields?  I must have missed some documentation.  Any help is appreciated!

January 12, 2017

It's not necessary; if you make a field in Salesforce it shows up in Marketo with the name you gave it.

For example, if I have a "Online Store" field I want to make I'll name it just "Online Store" and it will show up in Marketo as "Online Store". The API Name in Salesforce is also going to just be "Online_Store__c" since Salesforce already automatically appends "__c" to every custom field (as I'm sure you know). But no prefix is necessary.

This is automatic: so while no prefix is necessary, you also can't prevent the field from syncing unless you make sure your Salesforce user you used to sync between Marketo and Salesforce doesn't have visibility on that field. For this purpose I made my own Profile just for my Marketo user.

Hope that helps!

Edit: I almost forgot this thread is the other way around! I was talking about adding fields in Salesforce so as to create fields in Marketo, my bad. In short: after you have linked the two databases, if you want a new, custom field in Marketo to show up in Salesforce as well it has to be created in Salesforce. No naming conventions are necessary. If you do it the reverse-- create it in Marketo and need it to be in Salesforce AFTER you link the databases together you need Support to do it for you (and they don't do it in five minutes exactly, so make sure you have all the fields you need before linking up).    

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
January 13, 2017

@Christin Miller PRODUCTION​

The doc found here will show exactly how to create the fields: Adding Custom Marketo Fields to Salesforce. All of the new fields start with mkto71__, whereas the older ones start with mkto2__.

When it comes to this configuration change, the API names do need to be exactly correct as specified there in the doc. SFDC will let you put a different friendly name / label on the field separate from the API name. So even if you named the field "hamburgers" so that it shows in your page layouts as "hamburgers", the API name needs to be exactly correct as lined out in the documentation in order for them to remap to the existing fields on the Marketo side. If the wrong API name is used, it will just come through as a new custom field and won't automatically remap to the existing fields in Marketo.

Here's how it works:

The existing fields like for Lead Score will have data stop flowing to them from the Marketo side as of January 31st. All data will be saved in Marketo, so there's no data lost, but if you still need that data inside of SFDC, you'll need to create new fields for Marketo to pass the Lead Scores into. On the back end, Marketo has been coded to watch for these new fields to be created, but what it's watching for is the API name, which is why it needs to be created with the right one. Without the right API name, the sync doesn't match it up as the one it's watching out for. If it is the right API name, then right away Marketo knows that it needs to remap those fields to the existing fields in Marketo. So your new SFDC Lead Score field gets mapped over to connect to the existing Lead Score in Marketo and the backfill process kicks off to fill in all existing field values from the Marketo side over to the new field in SFDC.

Here's how you know you did it correctly:

Once you create the new fields with the correct API names, Marketo will automatically map those new fields to the existing Marketo fields. That initiates the backfill process to update the new fields. Once the backfill process is completed, you will receive an instance notification that it's done. However, that can take as much as a few days to complete depending on the size of your lead database. In the meantime, there's an easy way to check the field mapping to make sure it matched up correctly.

Checking field mapping directly in Marketo:

The mapping of Marketo fields to the corresponding SFDC fields is shown inside Field Management in the Admin section. So, navigate to Admin > Field Management. Then select one of the fields to highlight it. In the middle of the detail screen, you'll see CRM Field Map, which shows the API name of the field in SFDC that it is connected to. All of the new fields start with mkto71__, whereas the older ones start with mkto2__. If your CRM Field Map still shows mkto2__, then something was done incorrectly when creating the new fields. If the CRM Field Map shows the new mkto71__ version, then you're all set and good to go! Here's what to look for:

Lots of details there, but let me know if anything isn't clear or if you have any other questions at all. Happy to help!

-Mike

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
January 13, 2017

@Dan Parker​

In terms of the changes to the SFDC sync configuration, this is incorrect. If you are just creating new custom fields in SFDC for a different purpose, then this is accurate.

The changes to the SFDC sync configuration requires that new fields be created, and those fields must have the exact correct API name, including that mkto71__ prefix in order for the configuration change to work.

For other new custom fields like "Online Store", you're exactly correct--the field will inherit the API name from the name given to the field and it will carry though without any special prefix to change.

Hope that helps!

-Mike

January 13, 2017

Makes total sense, thank you.

My confusion arose due to the fact that the “Adding Custom Marketo Fields to Salesforce” looks like a generic tutorial until you scroll WAY down. A suggestion would be to name the help documents a little more succinctly to make the resources easier to identify.

Thanks again!

Lynn_Ray_Pardo
Level 4
March 2, 2019

Michael, thank you so much for this instruction!
MKTO Support didn't mention anything about this to me and I would have inadvertently written over a bunch of important data!

I'm going to link your instruction to some other threads about this.

(It's maddening to me that neither our private consultant or MKTO Support mentioned this rather important detail!)

Very Best Regards,
Lynn

Michael_Langell
Level 4
March 2, 2019

No problem Lynn!  Happy I was able to help.