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Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

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James_Zolinski
Level 4

Interesting Moments and CRM sync

In order for Interesting Moments to work, does your CRM need to be synched to Marketo?

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SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

(You should use inline images, not attachments; not all Jive clients can even see the attachments.)

Thank you, so with the way the flow is set up, according to your recommendation for the trigger, I should be able to track and store the CSV style like your example above?

You can check that quite easily: as you run people through the flow, that history field should be appended to in a consistent CSV-type fashion. You can look at the value right in the Marketo UI.

Will that history be included on the alert email that goes to our sales team? Or since our CRM is not integrated I am still only limited to last interesting moment. I believe that is what was said previously.

I think you're still confused.

When you use a Textarea as a history field, as Dan shows you how to do, you're updating a standard lead field (which you could output exactly as-is with the corresponding {{lead.token}}).  Calling it a "history field" gives it a clear purpose in your environment (it tells you that you should be appending to it, not overwriting it, at least for the most part) but in all other respects it's just like any Textarea.

Consistently structuring the contents of a history field is a good idea if you ever want to machine-parse that history field using Velocity token, or even if you want to extract your entire Marketo database and parse it offline using any other language. Technically, datetime - colon - activity type - comma - activity details - linebreak is also "consistent," but it's not a well-known structure, so better to stick with the tried-and-true-er CSV.  (Or if you're really adventurous, use a JSON format, which is even better for machine parsing but gets hard to read for people.)

Simply having the history field in a parseable format doesn't mean it automatically gets parsed, though.

If you only output the {{lead.History Field}} token in an email, no parsing of any kind happens.

If you have a Velocity {{my.token}} and it only contains the one line of VTL code ${lead.History Field} then similarly, no parsing happens (since you're in Velocity, you're able to parse it before printing, but you're just printing it instead in this case).

To take advantage of how Velocity can parse and filter in a CSV-like field, well, you actually have to parse it. That is, split on the line breaks and split on the commas to create "live" Velocity objects.  Then you can do things like re-sort by type of activity, filter by form name, etc.

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21 REPLIES 21
Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

My understanding is you have to purchase MSI seats to get interesting moments working, so getting interesting moments working and syncing with a CRM are two separate things.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

Interesting Moments are a Marketo feature that works with or without a CRM link.

Last IM data may be synced to CRM or surfaced via the MSI package, but neither is necessary to use the Interesting Moment flow step.

Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

I'm pointing out to the OP that if they haven't purchased a MSI add-on subscription, they don't get any of the interesting moment features - flow step, standard fields etc.. Something I recently found out myself.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

Nope. Just use the Interesting Moment flow step. Why would you think it would be CRM-only?

James_Zolinski
Level 4

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

Thanks Sanford. Just based on what I have been reading through the community about this topic, it seemed, in order to get the most out of IM, it needs to be synched to CRM. We do have MSI so I do see we have IM’s, but not currently running IM’s. We are looking to start using them and I’m trying to get the best understanding I can about IM’s so we can take full advantage of them.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

it seemed, in order to get the most out of IM, it needs to be synched to CRM. We do have MSI so I do see we have IM’s, but not currently running IM’s.

"The most out of" is subjective (and somewhat of a marketing ploy... not that there's anything wrong with that!)

IMs within Marketo itself are incredibly valuable for prioritizing activities on the lead and keeping history around for longer than they would as generic activities. ​Visit Web Page and ​Clicked Link on Web Page​, ​for example, age out after 90 days. Stamping interesting VWP and ​CL ​activities into IMs means they stick around for 25 months. That makes IMs well worth using on their own.

Veronica_Holme4
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

OMG. Why have I never thought of doing that? Nice.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

Wait up and tomorrow I'm putting the actual Velocity code on the Products blog (it's a little easier said than done, like everything in VTL).

Trevor_Parsell
Level 6

Re: Interesting Moments and CRM sync

Hey James,

What are you trying to do with Interesting Moments when you say "get interesting moments to work"?

When I used Interesting moments in the past, they were most useful when synced with CRM for providing updates on Sales related milestones, but you shouldn't have to be synced with CRM to access the functionality in Marketo.