Can you block fields from updating based on some kind of user record segment?

[Jeff_Bedford]

Hey All-

Here is what I think may be a unique problem. We have a B2B2C model. All of our B2B records were loaded in from SFDC and overall, the sync has been great. It's allowed us to do a ton of good work.

But, we also have a web services API that loads in our B2C records. We have done a bunch of work to isolate the fields being used by our B2B records and B2C records - to prevent overlap. Unfortunately, there remain a few fundamental fields like name and email address. What we are finding, is that at times, our web services API is loading in/updating B2C records that have an email address matching one of our B2B records - therefore overwriting some key fields in both Marketo and eventually SFDC. Obviously, this has big problem potential.

Our gut feeling, is that if we could find a (ideally dev-free) way to tell Marketo we don't want that API to update records that have a SFDC ID - this would squash the problem all together.

Anyone have any good ideas?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Can't be done the exact way you describe.

However, you can make these fields not updatable (for all leads) via API by blocking field updates in Admin. Then create proxy fields that are updatable. When the proxies are updated use a filtered SC + Change Data Value to update the real fields.

[Jeff_Bedford]

Thanks for the quick reply man. One question. If we block the fields from being updated via API - would the API still load them in if it was a net new record? that would be ideal if we could allow the API to create new records, but never edit fields on existing ones. We wouldn't even need to use proxy fields at that point, I don't think.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yes, can set initially but not update.

[Jeff_Bedford]

Thanks! Turns out something that felt more complicated actually had a pretty straightforward solution. That feature was designed well to allow initial data injection, but have a mechanism to reject updates from the same source in the future.

[Victor_Herrero]

I was researching on this topic, as we are facing this issue with contact information, for example: email. 

In our case, we want to ensure that for as long as someone doesn't have a proper account with us (in a separate system, let's call it "Compliance System"), we want them to be able to update their email address through form submission etc. 

Typically, after they are converted, they have an account in our "Compliance System", which only pushes updates to Salesforce. 

When that is the case, they can change their email address there and it syncs to SFDC, then to Marketo. 

The problem we are trying to solve is Marketo updating contact info on every form submission because that makes Salesforce and our Compliance system to step out of sync (the info only flows down from Compliance System).

It seems like the only suggestions / creative workarounds are: 

• to use proxy fields (so, "proxyEmail") and let a smart campaign push that value to "Email" on every update of "proxyEmail", as long as the record is not a Contact in Salesforce yet. I read about it here as well: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Product-Discussions/Blocking-field-updates-depending-on-record-based-c...
• to block the Email field from updates from form fill outs (potentially list uploads and maybe API as well)

Our current solution has been to block Marketo sync from updating a specific record type's contact fields (and this is probably causing a sync backlog).

The first solution would give us the required precision, but It means a complete refactoring (need to replace all contact fields with proxy fields in all integrations and more than a 100 forms)

The second solution is too generic (until someone is a contact it would be ok for them to update their phone and email, in case they gave junk email address / fake information initially), but also the simplest. We also have two record types for two types of customers and we may not want to apply this for both... 

Are there any other options out there? Is there a way to block or stop changes of fields in Salesforce without Marketo categorizing it as a sync failure and creating a sync backlog? Maybe silently ignore the update?