How do I add values to multi-picklist field?

[Anonymous]

For Contacts in Salesforce have a Interests field that is a multi-picklist . We just did a webinar, have a spreadsheets with contact data, and one of them is an Interest. We want to add this value (that already exists in Salesforce) to the Interest field of the Contacts in Saleforce.

How can we do it so that is *adds* to existing Interests, and doesn't overwrite them?

Any help is appreciated

Patrick

[Anonymous]

Hi Patrick -

This article should help: https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000LH9gCAG

[Josh_Hill13]

You could export the current field, then use CONCATENATE to connect the data together in Excel, then re-upload and overwrite the existing value with the complete data.

It would look something like this in Marketo:

Value 1; Value 2; Value 3

so be sure to include the semi colon when you do this in Excel.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. That is a possible way but would require that we have to extract selected people that we have in our database first. Since the webinar will also have new Leads, it would almost become a manual effort where each person in teh spreadsheet needs to be checked to see if he/she is in Salesforce, then do the export, concatenate and upload.

What I was hoping to do is just have the spreadsheet and write a smart campaign that could do it for new Leads (just add the Interest) and current Contacts (append the additional Interest). Is that not possible?

TIA

Patrick

[Anonymous]

I would also be interested in a "change data value" to update a multi-select field in SFDC rather than replace the historic data that already exisits.  Our business requires that we track geographic interests of our clients (nearly 80 discrete values to select).  I am looking to update our geographic interests based on the links our clients click on within engagment emails.  Exporting lists, manipulating the data, and importing it back is would be entirely manual and undermine automation efforts.

Any help would be appreciated. 

[Maggie_Gilbert]

I want to do exactly what Hal has described above. Subscribing to post and hoping for more info.

(Side note: I found this article: https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000KzejCAC that shows you how to append data to a field. I tested it with a multi-select field and upon populating the field the first time, it does actually select one of my possible values, but the second and third (etc) time it basically creates a whole new value that isn't one of my values. Ie. if I go back into Salesforce, I can still add the values that I seem to have selected. Weird and not helpful. Can't search them properly in reports etc. in Salesforce.)

 

[Maggie_Gilbert]

I take it back! I found the answer: do what that article says to do but instead of a comma after the token, put a semi-colon (which is the same thing that separates them in Salesforce). Success!