I want to import custom object to test - can someone check my logic?

[laevinsdad]

Hi everyone. As a one-person Marketo "department", I am learning new things about the instance I inherited. One is that our CRM and Marketo do not communicate - there is a daily file transfer that appears to be customer data (name, email, etc) and custom object (type of account, when opened, etc) that captures any new customers and places them into a workflow (existing Onboarding Journey). Our I.T. Department sends me spreadsheets for both as a way to check the data transferred if I want or need.

That said, I have completed a new customer onboarding journey that I'd like to test using fake test data that mirrors the two spreadsheets.

The field that ties both spreadsheets together is called, CIF, and I think I need to exclude this from a list import of the customer data. When I upload the custom object spreadsheet, I will need to include CIF.

Needless to say, I am a bit apprehensive in uploading the spreadsheets and testing the data. On its surface, does this sound like I am on the right track? To be extra careful, I suppose I could create a filter that includes only the email addresses of the test data. I am most worried, however, of inadvertently creating an error to the existing custom object and its data.

Any feedback or advice is most welcome. Thank you in advance for reading my post.

Cheers

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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there is a daily file transfer that appears to be customer data (name, email, etc) and custom object (type of account, when opened, etc) that captures any new customers and places them into a workflow (existing Onboarding Journey).

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Not sure what you mean by “file transfer” as there’s no such thing as a file that gets uploaded directly to Marketo, e.g. via SFTP. Any import must go through the REST API, either Bulk Import or one of the paginated API endpoints.

Overall, you haven’t provided enough information for a meaningful response. We don’t even know the Custom Object schema (dedupe fields, link fields, field types)!

What we can say, though, is there’s no reason at all to use your production Custom Object. You should create a new Custom Object, call it Customer Data Testing, with the same schema as the production one. Then use that for testing as it cannot have side effects, of course assuming you only link the test objects to leads flagged as test leads.

[laevinsdad]

Thank you, Sanford. My apologies too for not providing more information. Our Custom Object is called Product Account. The Dedupe fields are Account Number, CIF, and Type. Link field is CIF, Linked Object name is Lead, Linked Field name is CIF, Source is UI. Our field types include mostly String with a couple Date/Time and one field called "Link" (this is attributed to the CIF). I believe we use the REST API but as I understand, it is only executed once a day.

Thank you for your patience and help as my Marketo instance is inherited, I am the only one who works in it and am still learning. Your suggestion to create and use a test custom object is very helpful - I will employ this method.

Cheers

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Linked Field name is CIF

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OK, then you obviously can't leave the CIF out of the Person upload as you suggested earlier. That's the field that joins the 2 objects together.