Report on field usage?

[nsoria1]

Thank you very much for the assistance Darshil and Katja.

Here are some follow up questions that I have:

• What would CDV stand for?
• Do you know if there is an api that allow me to query the "where the field is used" report instead of the UI? 
• Would this cover all the fields or there are some exceptions? Ex: when a field is not used by anything but is still being populated for example

Thanks a lot

[Michael_Florin]

CDV = Change Data Value. A Smart Campaign Flow Step.

https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/fields/ describes the fields endpoint.

You can see field usage in detail here. The icons indicate where it is used specifically, as in: On a form, in a Smart Campaign (Smart List or Flow), on an email as a lead token and so on.

[nsoria1]

Thanks a lot Michael for the response.

I was checking the documentation page for the endpoint https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#!/Leads... which I understand may be the one that retrieves the usage information.

Unfortunately, by looking in the example provided in the page looks like it is now showing the information about the field usage as shown in the UI.

Would you be aware of any endpoint that retrieves that data? Or would it be only available in the UI?

Thanks a lot.

[Darshil_Shah1]

I think that endpoint retrieves just the metadata of the respective field. I hope you know that you could export the CSV file with all the references of the field (along with the Marketo URL of the assets) in the Marketo Admin > Field Management > Select Field > Field Actions dropdown.

[nsoria1]

Thanks Dashill for the reply.

Yes I know it can be done through the UI based on the thread but wanted to check if there is some programmatically way to do it because we want to review each field on Marketo.

Basically we are trying to do an analysis of the field usage to decide whether it should be purged or not for the sake of reducing the garbage data.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Yes I know it can be done through the UI based on the thread but wanted to check if there is some programmatically way to do it because we want to review each field on Marketo.

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Can you explain the technical requirement for a “programmatic” way? Even if there were a supported API endpoint to get the Used By results, how would that be better than exporting the data from the UI? (Given this is probably a very infrequent ask.)

[nsoria1]

Thanks Sanford for the reply.

It is basically because we would like to review every field to understand if needs to stay or if it needs to be deleted. We are trying to purge unused field and that would be the reason of querying each field through the process described. }

If there is an endpoint we can use to avoid going through the UI that would be awesome.

Does that makes sense? 

[Darshil_Shah1]

I don't think there's a single endpoint that could return you the Used By data of all the fields in Marketo. I'm afraid you'd need to go through the UI, which IMO is not that unwieldy given that for each field Marketo actually gives a comprehensive CSV with URLs and names of all the assets referencing the respective field. You could weed out the fields that have a recent Change Data Value activity from the non-obsolete sources as that're obviously the fields that you wouldn't to hide.

[SanfordWhiteman]

There’s no supported way to export Used By in one swoop.

I have used some pretty crazy JS to get all the XLS files for all the fields in one or two clicks. It still creates separate files, though. And what we found running it against a massive instance is that a few fields used in tens of thousands of places timed out. (Those same requests also time out if you click the button, though.)

[nsoria1]

Thanks a lot to both of you for the responses.

I believe I have the required information in order to start understanding the usage and importance of each field in Marketo.

Will try to automate the XLS generation from the UI as you did Sanford.

Thanks a lot.