Program Member Status Changes via Bulk Import API - Logs are overrun with unchanged status logs

[SanfordWhiteman]

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We have confidence in knowing that our application set the status already, and there's no need for this gigantic number of redundant status logs

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If you are 100% sure that no other process can set a competing status, just leave the already-processed people out of subsequent calls.

[Katja_Keesom]

In addition to Sanford's comments, your original statement here raised a question with me:

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We send Program Member Status Updates back to the Marketo platform from ours when triggered by a webhook.

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I am assuming Marketo does not know for which person to request a status update, as it is your event program that knows whose status was updated recently. So I do not really see how the webhook will know for which person to request the status change. If the webhook is triggering the update from the Marketo end I can understand you will receive a lot of Skipped messages for those people where simply nothing happened. Would it not make more sense to let your event program mark the people with a recent status change and push the update from that end? That way you will know it only covers people with an actual change. Depending on volumes you could even make that an instant process step to send the individual update per person.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Interesting point. I figured the “webhook” in question wasn’t a Marketo webhook but rather one fired from the 3rd-party platform to an (also 3rd-party) integration tier. If it’s a Marketo Call Webhook then it couldn’t know when someone needed updating.

But still, the other platform would know. There’s no reason to be setting a status that you know in advance will be skipped, because you’re the only one controlling the status.

On the other hand, sometimes Smart Campaigns are also changing statuses, so when setting via API we try for the one we want: if it’s the current one, no problem, and if it’s a previous one, also no problem as it means the person has been moved along.

Also, not clear why the Bulk Import API would be used for a single lead, if it’s really one-by-one. (Not that there’s anything specifically wrong with using the bulk APIs for single rows, except you don’t get a synchronous response.)

[jkimexperience]

Katja -

Is there an API call that can update a single Program Member?

The bulk import api seems to run through all program members within the specific program id that I am making the call to, even if my CSV file has only the specific Program Members that need updating. Is there something logical I can be doing with this particular API call to make sure only the specific members in the CSV file are updated?

[SanfordWhiteman]

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The bulk import api seems to run through all program members within the specific program id that I am making the call to, even if my CSV file has only the specific Program Members that need updating.

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That’s absolutely not how the bulk import works!

You must be confusing something you’re doing with something the Marketo instance is doing via Smart Campaign.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Is there an API call that can update a single Program Member?

The bulk import api seems to run through all program members within the specific program id that I am making the call to, even if my CSV file has only the specific Program Members that need updating. Is there something logical I can be doing with this particular API call to make sure only the specific members in the CSV file are updated?

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Both Bulk Program Member Import and Update Program Member Status can update single or multiple members. There’s no endpoint limited to one and only one member.