How do Folders and Programs relate to one another?

[Anonymous]

Good Morning!

We're working on integrating Marketo data into our Dashboard and in coding the solution we've noticed that both Folders and Programs can have leads associated with them.

Can someone explain if / how a Marketo Folder and a Marketo Program relate to one another?

We wouldn't want to pull leads info for both and end up with duplicate lead records on our side.

Thanks in advance and have a great day!

- Brie

[Kenny_Elkington]

Hi Brie,

Not sure what you mean here.  Leads don't have any association to Folders whatsoever.  Folders and Programs are similar in that they can both be containers for assets, but leads can only be related to programs, through membership and not to folders.

[Jessica_Cross1 · Accepted solution]

Folders are a way to organize programs and keep your tree manageable for all your marketo users.  Leads do not belong to folders, they belong to programs, smart lists, list, segments, etc. I have folders to organize active programs, email nurturing programs, data management, lead lifecycle, scoring, and even inactive programs.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Jessica!

My team was using the Get Folder by Name » Marketo Developers  endpoint and based on one of the responses ids we obtained for folders, we used the ID in a call for https://101-AKY-122.mktorest.com/rest/v1/leads/programs/1037.json and 100 leads were returned. Perhaps we got lucky and this ID also matches up with a program in our hierarchy?

[0] => Array

  (

  [name] => Borrell

  [description] =>

  [createdAt] => 2015-02-05T19:29:36Z+0000

  [updatedAt] => 2015-02-05T19:29:56Z+0000

  [url] => https://app-sj01.marketo.com/#ME1037A1

  [folderId] => Array

  (

  [id] => 1037

  [type] => Program

  )

  [folderType] => Marketing Event

  [parent] => Array

  (

  [id] => 47

  [type] => Folder

  )

  [path] => /Marketing Activities/Default/Active Marketing Programs/Events/Trade Shows/Borrell

  [isArchive] =>

  [isSystem] =>

  [accessZoneId] => 1

  [workspace] => Default

  [id] => 1037

  )

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

This is a great explanation.  The only thing I would add is that you can also set tokens on the folder level. I picked up the trick from Edward Unthank​'s Summit Presentation.   If you put all like programs in a folder, you can use a top level token so to speak.

This can be utilized in a lot of creative ways from scripts that all landing pages should inherit to CSS, flow steps and more.  I've since put most programs in a 'global' folder which gives the ability to change things easily across many assets at once.