Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Release Schedule | Community
Skip to main content
Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 5, 2016

Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Release Schedule

  • August 5, 2016
  • 26 replies
  • 9141 views

Included in this article

Overview

The configuration changes being made will require customers to recreate some fields if they want to still use that data within SFDC. Once the fields are recreated, the backfill process begins, which in turn starts a global resync of all leads from SFDC to Marketo. This will push a lot of data between Marketo and SFDC. To minimize the risk of a traffic jam, we will be scheduling this roll out over the course of 6 months. This gives all customers a set time frame to work with and helps to avoid peaks in traffic. If the time scheduled for you doesn’t work out, we’ll try to accommodate another time within this six month timeframe that does work well for you.

Alphabetical Scheduling Details

The changes being made will be staggered over 6 months in order to ensure we don’t cause any traffic jams while passing data back and forth. The best way to schedule this is to go in alphabetical order. This order will be alphabetically by your Marketo instance’s Account String, not your company name. Please check the section below for how to find your Account String.

We have done a careful analysis of our customer’s lead database sizes and have grouped batches of customers together based on size of the lead databases, so some groups have more customers in them than other groups do. Each group of customers will be given a time frame to work with to recreate the fields and initiate the backfill process.

Timeline

The six month time frame will begin on August 15th and will continue on until the end of January, 2017.

Specific Timing

The customer base has been split into the following groups with times scheduled for deployment.

If you intend to recreate the fields and initiate the data backfill process, here is the schedule for when you can recreate those fields:

Group

Customers

Date Range of Deployment

Group 1

Account String Begins With:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9

August 15th to August 31st

Group 2

Account String Begins With:

A, B or C

September 1st to September 30th

Group 3

Account String Begins With:

D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K or L

October 1st to October 31st

Group 4

Account String Begins With:

M, N, O or P

November 1st to November 30th

Group 5

Account String Begins With:

Q or R

December 1st to December 31st

Group 6

Account String Begins With:

S, T, U, V, W, X, Y or Z

January 1st to January 31st

How to locate your Account String

In your Marketo instance, navigate to Admin > Landing pages. You’ll see your Account String listed right in the middle of the screen.

Scheduling Requests

Marketo understands that this change could be an inconvenience and specific timing may be needed for our customers to plan accordingly. If you have a different time within the 6 month window that works better for your company, please reach out and we’ll accommodate as best we can.

You can reach Marketo Support through the Support Portal, by email, or over the phone. Specifics on how to contact Marketo Support can be found here: Contact Marketo Support

Info Needed for Scheduling Requests.

  1. What your preferred dates are. We’re happy to accommodate your schedule, so please be sure to tell us what that is. It’s best to give us a range or a few options of what scheduled dates work best for you, not just one set date.
  2. The details of your Marketo instance. In order to quickly identify your Marketo instance, we’ll need your Account String, which is a unique identifier for your Marketo instance. If you have more than one Marketo instance, please be sure to mention that and include the Account Strings for each one.

Where to Go for More Information

  • Recap Summary

Now that the changes have been completed, and the deprecation date has passed, this doc will give you the overview of what has happened: Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync - Recap Summary

  • Frequently Asked Questions

Check out our FAQ for the answers to the most commonly asked questions. Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Frequently Asked Questions

  • Overview Documentation

This doc will give you a high level overview of what the configuration changes are and what to expect moving forward: Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync - Overview

  • Discussion thread

We've created this discussion thread in the community to address any questions you may have. This discussion thread will be monitored by the Marketo team to ensure you get answers to your questions. Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Questions and Discussion

  • Under the Hood Documentation

This doc will give you all of the nitty gritty details of exactly what is happening. If you're looking for in depth technical details, this is the go-to doc to check out! Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Under The Hood

  • Recreating Affected Fields

There are different versions of Salesforce, but don't worry, all of the details on how to recreate the affected fields as well as a video tutorial can all be found in the documentation here: Adding Marketo Fields to Salesforce

 

  • Preventing Problems In Salesforce

Recreating the new fields in Salesforce can cause your Workflows, Apex Triggers, Reports and AppExchange apps behave differently. They'll need to be updated and this doc will show you what to watch out for: Changes to Marketo Salesforce Sync – Preventative Troubleshooting

  • Contact Marketo Support

If you would prefer to talk to someone live, please contact Marketo Support over any of the channel listed here: Contact Marketo Support

This post is no longer active and is closed to new replies. Need help? Start a new post to ask your question.

26 replies

August 10, 2016

Specifically, what are the fields affected?

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 10, 2016

Brent,

It's the fields that were created by the MLM AppExchange package in SFDC.

The list of fields can be found right here:

https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-3836#jive_content_id_Fields_Affected

Angela_Dalmas
Level 1
August 11, 2016

And do we recreate the fields in SFDC BEFORE or AFTER the scheduled deployment date for our specific account?

Thanks!

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 11, 2016

Great question!

You'll want to recreate the fields during that scheduled deployment. That schedule is the range of time you'll want to actually do that within. So it gives you a month long window to work with and also lets us stagger it out over time to avoid any heavy traffic.

Ande_Kempf4
Level 4
August 11, 2016

Will I need to delete the previous fields in SFDC once I create the newer ones?

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 11, 2016

Hi @Ande Kempf​,

You can delete the fields by uninstalling the MLM package, but it's not required. If you want to uninstall the package, here's the SFDC documentation on how to do that: Uninstalling a Package

One thing to note though - if you have any reports or workflows that use these fields, those dependencies have to be removed first before it'll let you uninstall them.

Check out the Cleaning Up SFDC section in our Under the Hood documentation here for all the details: https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-3836#jive_content_id_Cleaning_Up_SFDC  Let me know if you have any other questions

Mike

Ande_Kempf4
Level 4
August 11, 2016

Of course -  thank's Mike.

August 18, 2016

Hi, we have two instances of Marketo - Sandbox and Production. Both of them falling on the same deployment time frame (account string starts with M). Is it possible to create the fields in Salesforce Sandbox first and wait for the sync to complete and then do the same with Production? This way we can be prepared if we face any issues during sandbox sync.

Mike_Reynolds2
Level 10
August 18, 2016

Hi @koushik saha - 2​

Yes, we can certainly make that work. Just be sure to start the sandbox at the start of the month so there's plenty of time to work with after and you don't run into an overlap into the next group. Also, just keep in mind that recreating the fields is what initiates the whole thing, so only recreate the fields in Sandbox and then when it's all clear, then do it in production.

-Mike

August 29, 2016

So will the drip process of back-filling the new fields with the old fields data be done automatically by Marketo? Or do we handle it?

And if the backfill happens automatically, when does it actually take place? Is it any time after we create the new fields? Or is there a schedule? I'd like to know exactly when the cut-over takes affect so I can time our workflows/reports/etc properly, thanks!