Fields Overwritten with Null Values

[Anonymous]

Hello Community,

We currently have a process to collect data values from prospects through forms. For example, "How many distribution centers does your network have?". Prospects will answer this information, which triggers an alert to me that an Earned Data field has changed. That field is synced to Salesforce and is write-able both ways. The sync IS working, and the value DOES make it into Salesforce.

However, periodically many of these fields are being overwritten and changed back to "Null". I will receive all of the alerts in the exact same minute - so, for example, at 11:09am two days ago, 17 fields were reset to Null from those fields. There are no existing workflows in Salesforce that would clean those fields. There is also no consistent time that all of the fields are changed.

I have no idea why these fields would be reset - this does not happen with fields other than those we're including in these forms. Any ideas as to why there would be a systematic reset of these fields!?! I'm stumped. Here's what the action log looks like:

The individual action looks like this:

Thanks for your help!

Taylor

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Your Salesforce lead's attribute "Method of distribution" contains empty value. During the salesforce -> marketo sync, the value is overwritten with null(empty) value. Please do check in Salesforce lead value.

Thanks,

Raj.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Yes, you're just restating the issue, though. That does not solve the problem. We know it's pushing a null value back into Marketo - but the value had been "Mixed" in Salesforce before it was cleared.

In other words, the Salesforce value should NOT be null. It's clearing the value that was entered during the Sync for some reason. But we don't have any triggers to clear the value in Salesforce, so we don't know why that is happening. Could it be an issue with the permissions, that doesn't allow Marketo to permanently write the value in Salesforce? And if not, why would they all change back at the same time?

[Anonymous]

FYI. I moved your post to Products and Support​, where we are trying to keep product related questions and answers. Thanks!

[Sam_Watkinson1]

Hi Taylor - wondering if you found a solution to this problem. I'm running into the same thing.

-Sam

[Zach_Rogers2]

Also experiencing the same issue now and curious to a solution.

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Zach - you might want to start a new question on this; this thread is three years old and the OP's account is deactivated.

[adaydan1]

Hi, we recently had this issue. Go to the field's detail page in salesforce, click the "Set Field-Level Security" button, and make sure that the field is not set to "Read Only" for your marketo API User profile. 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Well, when you update any field's permission to read-only for Marketo's sync user - Marketo can only read the data and cannot make any updates essentially.

The question / concern / situation is kind of reverse here if I'm not wrong - it's not that the updates from Marketo are causing any issues, it's rather the updates from SFDC clearing out the fields is kind of a situation of concern here. This usually happens when the fields in the Marketo have read-only access (i.e., no access / permission to edit the field(s)), and upon updating the data by Marketo's sync user as per updates in Marketo to SFDC, SFDC does not take the update but rather returns a NULL value which eventually wipes the data off in the Marketo too. Or, if the Marketo's sync user has the apt permissions to write the data than there may be the case where in the field values in the SFDC may have been wiped off at its end which would then eventually sync back to Marketo wiping off the data in the Marketo too.