Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 7.15.09 AM.png

Custom Activities in Marketo

John_M
Marketo Employee
Marketo Employee

Summary

One of the more recently introduced features in Marketo is Custom Activities. We all know about the built in Activities Marketo provides out of the box, and you can see that list using the Get Activity Types REST API Endpoint, but what's a "custom" activity?

Well essentially it's analogous to a built in activity in structure and purpose in every way, only you define it as an action a user has taken that is relevant to your business, and you add those activities through a special REST API Endpoint. Just like Marketo activities, you get a Filter and Trigger associated with the new custom activity that you can use in your smart lists

Custom activities are currently a beta feature in Marketo, but are currently in production with a fair few clients. They must actually be created in your instance by consulting or support, so once you define their attributes, you can work with professional services or support to get the activities themselves created. Once that's done, you can use the API to populate them.

Defining A Custom Activity

The following aspects of a custom activity must be defined to create it in Marketo.

- Name : The name of the custom activity (that one's a bit obvious)

- Description (Optional) :

- Trigger Name : This is the name Marketo will give to the Trigger associated with this custom activity

- Filter Name : This is the name Marketo will give to the Filter associated with this custom activity

- Attributes : This is the list of all the relevant attributes on the activity. The possible datatypes are the usual suspects.. integer, float, string, boolean, and datetime

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 7.15.09 AM.png

Example

The example I've chosen is "Purchase Product". When a Lead purchases a product, you might want to send a welcome email, or add that lead to  nurture stream. When passing on your request, you should have these ready to give to support or consulting in a concise format to avoid confusion. Note that you do NOT need a "purchaseDate" attribute, as Marketo give you a "date of activity" attribute for free.

- Name : Purchase Product

- Description (Optional) : a lead purchases a product!

- Trigger Name : Purchases Product

- Filter Name : Has Purchased Product

- Attributes :

     productID: string

     productName: string

     productDescription: string

Once the object is created, support will supply an Activity ID to you, which you'll use in your REST API calls to add activities. Be sure to make a note of it! In my case, that ID is 100006.

Let's take a look! The following screenshot shows the Trigger and two Filters that are created for you, and notice that your custom activity attributes are available as constraints. Cool right?!?! Think of all the cool possibilities. One thing that comes to mind is the creation of an activity like "Custom Form Fill". If you're using the SOAP or REST API to handle form fills in a custom way rather than using Marketo Forms, you don't get a "form fill" event.. but now you can emulate that with a custom Activity!

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 7.31.07 AM.png

Adding Activities

Now that you have your shiny new activity, lets add some using the REST API. For this example, I use Postman, and I really recommend it. It simplifies the process of interacting with the REST API. Note if you arent comfortable creating timestamps, there is help available! Check out sites like the Timestamp Generator / Converter - Timestampgenerator.com

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 8.38.14 AM.png

Request (note that you can send in many activities in one request)

{

   "input":[

      {        

         "leadId":34,

         "activityDate":"2015-07-20T12:30:00-08:00",

         "activityTypeId":100006,

         "primaryAttributeValue":"SKU12345",

         "attributes":[ 

            {

                "name": "productName",

                "value": "iPhone"

            },

            {

                "name": "productDescription",

                "value": "iPhone 6s+"

            }

         ]

      },

      {        

         "leadId":34,

         "activityDate":"2015-07-20T12:30:00-08:00",

         "activityTypeId":100006,

         "primaryAttributeValue":"SKU12346",

         "attributes":[ 

            {

                "name": "productName",

                "value": "Apple Watch"

            },

            {

                "name": "productDescription",

                "value": "Apple Watch Edition"

            }

         ]

      }

  ]

}

Response:

{

  "requestId": "94a2#14eac235e1a",

  "result": [

    {

      "id": 76356,

      "status": "added"

    },

    {

      "id": 76357,

      "status": "added"

    }

  ],

  "success": true

}

Viewing Activities

Just like normal activities you can view these in campaign result, and also in lead details under the activity tab.

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 8.47.13 AM.png

Limitations and Considerations

- The volume limit for these activities is a bit fluid, but we recommend keeping under 100,000 per day. That limit can be revisited depending on usage.

- Custom Activities cannot be used in email scripting. Think of them like normal activities.

6088
16
16 Comments
Justin_Norris1
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

John Mattos​ Exciting stuff. Custom objects and custom activities represent a pretty huge step forward in extending the Marketo data model and really molding your instance to your business needs.

It would be cool to be able to create custom activities via the UI (like the new "self-serve" custom object options being released).

P.S. Great job to you and Kristen Carmean​ and others writing on this blog. Lots of really valuable stuff here.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Pretty sweet. Need to pass this along to our developers. We're currently using Interesting Moments to flag product purchases which seems to be not nearly as robust as what you've stated above.

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Fully agreed, to be complete, we should be able to manage these trough the admin UI, as we will be able to do with custom objects.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Is there tentative timeline on when this feature will be fully released? 

Anonymous
Not applicable

John Mattos​ I am now hearing that these activities are actually not pruned, so I just wanted to mention that here for anyone who might be hesitating to use these because of that.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Will custom activities be archived after 90 days?

Anonymous
Not applicable

John Mattos (W)​ Cool. Is there an update on when Custom Activities is coming out of beta? We're trying to flow survey results from 3rd party application into Marketo and are trying to figure out whether to implement using Custom Objects or Custom Activities. Thanks!

Chelsea_Kiko
Level 6 - Champion Alumni

Hey John Mattos​ - just read this and we are implementing custom activities. However, I have a question - how about net new leads? If someone is new and is doing the custom activity I set up - are they added to the database from REST API? Or, do I have to run via the API to add them first to the database then run through the custom activity workflow?

Please let me know, we are excited to implement this!

Emma_Wu1
Level 2

Hi Chelsea, this reply that you sent has been a while, I'm sure you already got your question sorted out. Do you mind sharing with me? I have the same concerns. Thank you!

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

The answer is it's a 2-step process.

Think hard about the capacity of your CA-based solution when it's under load, particularly (but not only) malicious load.