Clarifications Needed on Salesforce-Marketo Sync: Custom Filters and Sync Frequency

[meet21]

Hello Marketo Community,We are integrating Salesforce with Marketo and have been following the official public Marketo documentation and some complementary material that we found (here and here). However, we've encountered some challenges and would appreciate insights from the community.Here are our key questions:

• Person_Account support: How does the custom sync filter behave for Account & Contact Object synchronization (Person Account)? We observed that when the Custom sync filter ( Account.Marketo_Sync_Required = false ) and the ( Contact.Marketo_Sync_Required = true ), updates made to the Contact object are still synced to the customer in Marketo. However, updates made to the Account record aren't synced to Marketo. On the other hand, when the (Account.Marketo_Sync_Required = false ) no updates made to the record are synced to Marketo.
• Custom Sync Filter Behavior in SFDC: In Salesforce, we've set a custom sync filter (Marketo_Sync_Required__c) to TRUE for necessary data syncs. Our question is, will this record continue to be sent to Marketo every 5 minutes (the standard Marketo sync frequency), even if there are no new updates (i.e., the record remains unchanged)? Does Marketo consider any specific fields, like lastUpdate, to determine what gets sent? Or only when we set that (Marketo_Sync_Required__c) to FALSE the sync will stop no matter what happens to the record in SFDC.
• Bidirectional Sync for Lead, Contact, Campaign: After Marketo receives a record, we use a Smart Campaign to reset the custom sync filter to FALSE. We assume this signals Salesforce not to resend the record. Is this correct and the best practice?
• Strategy for Other Objects (like Opportunity and Account) that don't support bidirectional sync in the Marketo Connector: For objects other than Lead, Contact, and Campaign, we are considering a batch process that runs hourly to reset the sync flag for records older than an hour. At a high level, is this a recommended approach?
• Sync Frequency in Lower Environments: Is the Marketo Connector's sync frequency in lower environments also every 5 minutes, as in production? Can we modify this frequency?

We have been diligently following the official documentation and popular links found in the community, but are struggling with testing in lower environments.Any insights, or pointers to more detailed documentation, would be greatly appreciated.Thank you for your support!

[Katja_Keesom]

It is very important to understand the functionality of a custom sync filter. It indicates whether a record should be "kept in sync". If the sync filter is set to true, any changes on it in either platform will be synced across. Salesforce uses the change log to identify which records need to be synced in every cycle, so if there is no change on a record, nothing will happen. So for any record you want to be visible in both platforms you need to keep the sync flag set to true.

The scenario where you would have a person that syncs and the associated acccount set to false seems dangerous to me. If the person is visible in Marketo I would say it is important to always have the up to date information on the associated account visible to, otherwise that person will not be correctly evaluated in target audiences. So based on the improved understanding of the working of the sync filter, I would encourage you to review the logic of your sync filters on the different objects.

[meet21]

Hi Katja,

Thank you very much for your insightful response. It really helps to clarify the functionality of the custom sync filter.

We understand the importance of keeping the sync flag set to true for records that need to be visible on both platforms. However, we're encountering a specific challenge. Our main issue is with the SFDC field SystemModStamp, which triggers a sync with Marketo. This field is getting refreshed due to changes in fields that aren't relevant to Marketo.

To give you a clearer picture: out of 100 fields in an SFDC account, only 30 are visible to the SFDC Marketo user (used by the Marketo Connector). But whenever any of these 100 fields change, the Marketo connector identifies the change in the SystemModStamp and initiates a sync, even if the 30 fields relevant to Marketo remain unchanged. This becomes problematic as those other 70 fields may undergo multiple recalculations throughout the day, triggering unnecessary syncs for data that hasn't actually changed in the context of Marketo's requirements.

Do you have any suggestions on how we might manage this more effectively? Perhaps a way to limit the sync trigger to changes in only those 30 relevant fields, or any other workaround you might recommend? Thank you again for your support and looking forward to your valuable advice.

Best regards

[Steven_Vanderb3]

What issue are you actually facing that you're looking to solve? Checking records with updated timestamps but with no changes is a very fast operation and doesn't often cause many issues with sync throughput.

[meet21]

Hi Steven,

Thank you for your input. We're aware of the efficiency in checking records with updated timestamps. However, our main concern is with our current Marketo license tier, which limits the number of "messages" we can send daily. We've noticed that many irrelevant messages, triggered by updates to fields not pertinent to Marketo, are consuming our quota. To address this, we're considering using a custom sync filter for more precise control over what data is sent to Marketo. If there are any alternative methods to filter out these unnecessary events, we would greatly appreciate your suggestions.Thanks again for your assistance!

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Our main concern is with our current Marketo license tier, which limits the number of "messages" we can send daily.

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Not sure why you put “messages” in quotes. Are you referring to emails? SOAP messages/SFDC API calls? Please be more specific about the rate limit in question.

[meet21]

Hi,
Thanks for reaching out. In our internal discussions, we often refer to each synchronized item as a "message," but it seems in the Marketo context, "record updates" is a more appropriate term, IDK. Essentially, we're talking about opportunities, leads, accounts, and contacts that are updated during each sync cycle. For instance, if a sync identifies changes in 1000 opportunities, 1000 accounts, 1000 leads, and 1000 contacts, we consider these as 4000 "messages" (record updates).Our current challenge revolves around our Marketo integration's limit of 100,000 record updates per day. This is why we're keen on refining our sync process to ensure only necessary updates are sent to Marketo, avoiding unnecessary data transmission that doesn't serve our needs.Looking forward to your guidance on the best practices or terms commonly used in the Marketo community.
Best regards

[SanfordWhiteman]

Where is such a limit coming from? Are you talking about a custom integration, not the native SFDC Sync? We're missing a ton of context.