Extract Activity Log & Write to Field

[Anonymous]

Hi all! Short of doing a bulk extraction, wondering if anyone has experience around (or has thought through) writing Activity Log data to fields? For example, if I click on a person's Activity Type: Fill Out Form, then Activity Details will show me Client IP Address and Referrer URL. How might I take those values and write them to fields? Hoping there's a way to do this with triggers and tokens, but really would appreciate any ideas around this. Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

There's an essential mismatch between Activity Log data/metadata and lead fields.  Fields like IP Address and Referrer URL have more than one value for a single lead, and if you simply copied them to a lead field you'd be overwriting the earlier (and no less important) information.

While some -- but decidedly not all -- of these fields are available as {{trigger.}} tokens, my question is what you are trying to accomplish here.  What's the requirement you've been given?

[Anonymous]

Thanks Sanford. We want to have a record of the IP address and the page a form was on when someone opted in. Let's say a new lead opts in -- whatever IP address was used in that initial form will become the field value, which won't be overwritten by subsequent form fills. Really just want to write data to a field, but objective is to have this info handy should an opt-in be questioned. Hope that helps?

[SanfordWhiteman]

From a compliance standpoint, merely having a field that you claim originated from a form post is never going to stand  up as well as the actual activity log trace.

But if you want to do it this way, you can download the activity log each day, parse it, and rewrite the values to lead fields.

[Anonymous]

That was my fear: that this would have to be manual. The Activity Log trace is ideal, but fearing that will disappear with Marketo's new Data Retention Policy. But maybe you can confirm this data will remain intact? (Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes...)

[SanfordWhiteman]

I don't know if I'd call it "manual," more "programmatic" (you can make it an unattended process, it just takes programming).

But maybe you can confirm this data will remain intact? (Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes...)

Unfortunately, no. But that doesn't mean you have to write it back to the lead -- that's the part I'm saying isn't going to pass muster for compliance. Why not just export every month and keep the text files archived? They don't necessarily need to be uploaded into a database, nor flattened back into Marketo.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, we're going to go with a regular export process. Thanks Sanford!