🗣️ [Mentor Lauren McCormack] 🌟 Adobe Marketo Engage Community Mentorship Program 2024 🌟

[laurenmccormack]

So delighted to have you in this group!

[laurenmccormack]

All right, crew! Let's dive in! Be sure you go to the top of this thread and subscribe to it if you haven't already to get updates as we proceed.

That being said, let's talk about our first module in the Exam Prep Guide: Administration and Maintenance.

Section 1: Administration and Maintenance (12% of your total test score)

The Administration and Maintenance section of the exam will test your ability to:

• Determine the mapping process between Marketo and CRM
• Identify what happened to an asset using the Audit Trail
• Recognize differences between users and roles
• Given a scenario, identify the best fit for using workspace and partitions
• Identify CRM platforms with native Marketo synchronization
• Given a scenario, locate where information is referenced
• Illustrate the benefits of the folder structure and naming conventions

Here's a sample test question for you to get things rolling. Remember, speed to answer and accuracy will count for a chance to win swag or even a free exam voucher!

A marketer is evaluating CRM systems to connect with their Marketo instance. To what CRM systems does Marketo currently offer a native bi-directional sync that does not require the implementation of a third-party tool?

A. Marketing Cloud and ZoHo
B. Only Salesforce
C. Salesforce and Zeta Cloud
D. Salesforce and MS Dynamics

[gergana · Accepted solution]

Hi @laurenmccormack,

I am pretty sure the answer is D. Salesforce and MS Dynamics 🙂
Gergana

[laurenmccormack]

Yes! A nice easy one to use for us to practice. 😁 The first official question will be posted here on Friday. 

[KarinaVidal]

Hey @laurenmccormack, I have a quick question. I've been reading up on the Microsoft Dynamic native integration to MKTO and read that during the set-up, if the MD URL is incorrect, it cannot be updated later and will require a new MKTO subscription—yikes!

I know it's stated in the MKTO documentation, but is there a workaround for minor accidents like this?

Can an SFDC connection be added to remove the MD connection?

This tiny mistake can be detrimental to an instance and very costly. So, if there's no workaround, what support does MKTO provide, if any?

[gergana]

I’d like to share my personal experience and offer some suggestions to avoid problematic situations beyond what you mentioned.

Once you connect a CRM to your instance through a native connection, you cannot unsync and connect to another CRM later. In my company, we learned this the hard way 🙂. We had a Marketo sandbox instance connected to a Salesforce sandbox instance. (Although we weren’t dealing with MD directly, the principle is the same.) There was a period where neither instance was in use, and due to a lack of IT documentation, the SFDC sandbox instance connected to our Marketo sandbox was deleted. Afterwards, it was impossible to reconnect our Marketo sandbox instance to a new Salesforce sandbox instance.

@laurenmccormack, please correct me if I am wrong.

This situation is irreversible: once a Marketo instance is natively connected to a CRM instance, it cannot be subsequently connected to a new CRM instance. Fortunately, in our case, it was just a sandbox, so the impact wasn't catastrophic.

This issue becomes even more significant if the company decides to change its CRM (e.g., migrating from SFDC to MD or vice versa, or introducing a new CRM instance). In such cases, a new Marketo instance needs to be created and connected to the new CRM instance.

Actually, I am currently dealing with this situation as we are migrating CRM instances and, consequently, migrating the Marketo instance as well. It's quite an experience since we are setting up everything from scratch and using this opportunity to change our processes and make improvements.

[KarinaVidal]

Thanks for sharing your experience. If I'm understanding correctly, regardless of the CRM, once one is connected natively, a new CRM cannot be integrated (e.g., MD > MD, SFDC > MD, etc.). Were you told it could not be connected to a new instance because of the field mapping synced into MKTO? I'm curious to understand the "why." Also, with the Sandbox, once the SFDC sandbox was connected, you were also unable to re-establish to connection, correct?

[gergana]

I think mapping is one of the reasons (new instance: probably new data model, new API names for the fields, new mapping between Marketo and CRM fields, and so on), but I'll leave the explanation to @laurenmccormack as I am not the expert here.

Regarding the sandbox, in our case, the SFDC sandbox instance was deleted, not just "unsynced." So, a new sandbox should have been created and synced to Marketo's sandbox, but as mentioned earlier, this is not possible.

Another scenario could be if, for example, the sync user is deleted or deactivated for some reason on the CRM side. What happens in that case? There is probably a difference between a deactivated and a deleted user. Deactivated -> the sync stops until the user is reactivated, and all the updates that happened in the meantime are lost (is that right?). Deleted -> could a new sync user be created without consequences for future sync with Marketo? 

It's interesting to understand these dynamics better, so Lauren, please help us understand better 🙂

[laurenmccormack]

You're totally right! If you get a new SFDC instance, you have to stand up a new Marketo instance. They cannot be decoupled. At my agency, we frequently have to spin up new instances for this very reason. This post is very wise, @gergana!

[gergana]

Hi Laura, have you ever handled a case where the sync user was deactivated or deleted?

I'm curious to know what happens in that situation.