Report on field usage?

[Anonymous]

I just started a new job (yay!) and inherited an existing Marketo instance. I'm trying to get up to speed on processes and reporting and see a lot of fields that may or may not be used anymore. Is there any way to run a report go find out field usage? I know there's a tool called FieldTrip on the SFDC side that can do that but wondering if there's anything for Marketo specifically? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Matt_Stone2]

Two ideas:

• Create a smart list with <field name> IS NOT EMPTY -- you'd have to do this one by one to see which are in use and which aren't. You'll also see the kind of data in each
• Export your FULL database. Plop that in Excel and use filters/pivot tables/etc to do the same thing, but more quickly

[Anonymous]

Alisa,

Exporting the full database and doing it in Excel would probably be your best bet. Just do a pivot with field names on the rows and Empty or Not on the columns.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Rajesh and Matt. Those solutions will help if I want to find out if the fields have ever been used. But I guess what I really want to know is how recently they've been used. We've had Marketo for almost 4 years and SFDC long before that, so I'm trying ot figure out which fields are old and no longer needed. For example if there are fields that haven't been used or updated since 2012. I realize we would probably lose the data in those fields (or I would just hide the fields in the list) but if we haven't used that data in a long time I don't think it will be missed.

[Matt_Stone2]

To see if fields have been used during periods of time, you'll probably want to do the smart list method, but use the filter "Data Value Changed" and use the constraints to specify your date periods.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

The only limitation to the "Data Value Changed" is these types of changes are typically only stored for 90 days, so you won't have any record of data value changes beyond 90 days.

You might need to do a more thorough inventory of each of the fields to see if you're able to find when it was last used. Is there anyone on the SFDC side who might be able to provide some insight?

[Matt_Stone2]

You can run a lead history report on the SFDC side to achieve something similar, though it's likely you won't have history tracking enabled on all of the fields, and I'm also not sure if you'll have the same limitations as Dory mention about the Marketo filter.

[nsoria1]

Hi Matt, do you know if there is a way to measure the usage of a field? 

By exporting the fields and where they are being used does not mean it is actually being used that field.

Thanks a lot.

[Darshil_Shah1]

You'd need to go via a bit of a manual process here. Basically, all the assets that are currently live/active in the used-by list would be the places where your field is being currently (and actively) used. Eg., - active smart campaigns (trigger/recurring batch campaigns), approved segmentations, smart lists that are being used by live assets, forms that are placed on the live pages, etc. would all come in the lists of places where a field is actively being used. Keeping in mind the CDV activity gets purged from the activity log after 90 days, you could also check the CDV activity on this field to see if there has been any recent data updates on this field or not (as stated by the folks above).

[Katja_Keesom]

Indeed, and in the Admin section under Field Management you can check for each field which processes actually use it. Again rather a manual process, but worth checking.