Changing SFDC Field Type from Text to Picklist

[FILIPov]

Hello all,

A field in our Salesforce is synchronized through a Connector with a field in the Marketo. That field in Salesforce is a text field but we want to change it to a picklist. I know that Marketo deletes the data in the fields if they don’t match. So just to be on the safe side we will export it and re-import it after we change the field type.
1. How could this change affect the Marketo field and other things using that field?

2. I've read somewhere that typically, Salesforce picklist values will synchronize as text values in Marketo - is this correct?

[hbriere]

Hi there!

The Picklist field type doesn't exist in Marketo, it typically is converted into a String field type.

The main difference between Text vs String field type is the character limit: 

• Text field: Longer text. Supports up to 30,000 bytes. Standard ASCII characters use 1 byte per character (allowing up to 30,000 characters).
• String field: Shorter text, up to 255 characters.

Source: https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/fields/field-types/

Also, another big difference between these 2 field types is the filter:

• Text field: Not able to add multiple values to a Smart List filter, so not scalable if you are trying to filter on more than 10 values - Source: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/knowledgebase/adding-multiple-values-to-a-smart-list-filter-using-a-qu...
• String field: Able to add multiple values to a Smart List filter - more scalable.

I hope this helps!

[Darshil_Shah1]

@FILIPov, if you have a picklist field in Salesforce that is synced with Marketo, you'd only be able to choose the values defined in the picklist at Marketo's end; otherwise, you'd run into sync errors when this person record tries syncing over to Salesforce. And yes, as @hbriere mentioned, Marketo doesn't have a dedicated field type called picklist, but any Marketo string field mapped with the SFDC picklist field will behave as a picklist field in Marketo, similar to an unmapped synced SFDC picklist field (i.e., you'll be able to choose values from the dropdown; any other values would result in sync errors as mentioned above).