Fields overwritten with [null] by SFDC Sync

[Bishoy_Riad]

Hi Marketo Nation,

We found that sometimes, certain fields are being overwritten with "[null]" at the exact same time. There are no Salesforce automations that would clear them. There is also no consistent timing for this to occur.

I created a Smart List and found a few patterns:

1. All affected records are overwritten via Sync by SFDC, either referencing a Lead ID or Contact ID depending on the record type.

2. All affected records have a "Company" value ("Account Name" value in SFDC).

3. Among the Lead type records that are affected, they are only bookings imported from a legacy system. While they obviously do not have an Account associated, they do have a "Company" value populated.

Here's an example of how the Activity Log looks (this record includes all 5 fields that are affected):

The individual Activity Details for one of the logged events looks like this:

The Marketo Integration User has full edit level permissions for 4 of the 5 fields on the Lead and Opp objects, and read permissions for the same 4 fields on the Contact object.

Thanks for assisting!

Bishoy

[SanfordWhiteman]

You seem to be leaving out something important: are those fields blank in SFDC? And when were they cleared?

[Bishoy_Riad]

These fields are not blank in SFDC, and I don't believe they were cleared prior. We just turned on field history tracking for the fields in question to ensure they weren't cleared at any point in SFDC.

The [null] issue has been happening to different records since early 2018. At least 1 of the same 5 fields are being overwritten in each case.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Well, watch the history tracking closely before deciding there's a bug on the Marketo side.

[markb]

I'm having the exact same problem. Here's what I think is happening:

1. A user converts a lead to a contact in SFDC
2. During the brief moment the contact record does not have values in the name, address, title, phone and a couple of custom fields, a sync to Marketo occurs (SFDC does have the values when the conversion process is complete
3. Once the conversion is complete there is no subsequent event in SFDC to cause a sync to Marketo

[Chris_Wilcox]

Are you confident the Marketo Integration User has read/write access to those fields? Could be causing the issue in that Marketo 

1) Marketo tries to update a field

2) SFDC rejects the change

3) SFDC pushes back it's value of [null] into Marketo

4) Marketo is updated to [null]

[Lauren_Hawes]

We are also having this issue. A campaign changes their 'Person Status' in Marketo, but a SFDC Sync messes with it. It looks like it's being changed from [null] to "None" but the field was clearly changed to "Purchased List" 2 minutes prior.

[Justin_Schmidt]

Same here. Did you ever figure out the problem?