Questions on the Important Change to Activity Records in Marketo APIs

[Bill_Lundy3]

Regarding the email sent today and the post by Kenny Elkington on March 1st:

http://developers.marketo.com/blog/important-change-activity-records-marketo-apis/

When exactly is this happening?

The post says beginning May 2017 and the Spring 2017 release is currently planned for May 17th 2017. Is May 17th 2017 the first day we should expect to see this on any instances?

The email says “This will be supplanted by the "marketoGUID" string field in the next release.”

Is the “next release” that same Spring 2017 release or will the API be updated before that?

Will there be any time before the switch-over that the API returns both the new “marketoGUID” string field and the existing ActivityId?

Is there a way to switch an instance over to this prior to the Spring 2017 release?

This would help in the case of having a sandbox instance to program against prior to the Spring 2017 release to make sure this is in and tested ahead of time.

If the MarketoGUID is not available when the current ActivityID becomes unreliable, how should we uniquely identify an Activity record? 

The timestamp for activities is only is granular to a second, not millisecond.  We think it is doubtful that the combination of LeadId, ActivityTypeId, and activity timestamp to the second is granular enough to uniquely identify an activity.

When can we expect the API documentation to be updated to include the new “marketoGUID” field?

Will old activities be back-filled with the “marketoGUID” field?

Does Marketo plan to use versioning in their REST APIs going forward?

The endpoint currently has a version number in it and we thought breaking changes like this might be put on a new version?

Should we expect other breaking changes with short time-frames like this in the Marketo API going forward?

This change looks to be a breaking change with a two month window to make the change and not an easy way to program against the new API prior to the change. As more partners build services with the Marketo API, it would be good to get a sense of what to expect on this topic moving forward.

Any additional details on the above is greatly appreciated!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Dan opened a Discussion on this here: An Important Change is Coming to Marketo's REST and SOAP APIs so maybe you can delete your thread and continue over there to help concentrate the discussions in one place.

[Bill_Lundy3]

Thanks Sanford. I didn't see anything in the developer section and when I read that original post it seemed more of a general how people plan to deal with it with integrations. It didn't have all the replies when I read it.

I added my comments there and will delete this.

Edit - actually Kenny replied here as I was writing the other reply. So delete that one. Sorry for any confusion.

[Kenny_Elkington · Accepted solution]

>Will there be any time before the switch-over that the API returns both the new “marketoGUID” string field and the existing ActivityId?

We may be adding this in our Minor release next month.  I'll share this when I'm certain.

>Is there a way to switch an instance over to this prior to the Spring 2017 release?

This this change is coming as part of an infrastructure rollout, so coordinating cutover would be difficult at best.

>If the MarketoGUID is not available when the current ActivityID becomes unreliable, how should we uniquely identify an Activity record?

You shouldn't have to face this scenario

>When can we expect the API documentation to be updated to include the new “marketoGUID” field?

We'll try to get this all updated for the "how-to" docs over the next few days to a week.  The endpoint reference will need to wait since it's generated from code

>Will old activities be back-filled with the “marketoGUID” field?

Yes.

>Does Marketo plan to use versioning in their REST APIs going forward?

Yes.  Versioning would not help in this case however, since our infrastructure will no longer provide the means to generate a unique integer ID in the same way.

>Should we expect other breaking changes with short time-frames like this in the Marketo API going forward?

This situation is somewhat unique because our infrastructure is pushing this change onto our public interface.  Whenever possible, we'll give as much advance warning as we possibly can.

[Bill_Lundy3]

Kenny,

Thanks for the reply and the additional information.

This helps!

Looking forward to hearing more over the coming weeks.

-Bill

[Kurt_Koller]

Kenny,

Just re-read the comments here. Through Bulk Extract API for activity, we get many records with an empty "" marketoGUID. We see this on multiple Marketo instances. I've also submitted a ticket on this.

Thanks