Salesforce.com sync errors - hundreds of duplicate leads created in SFDC by Marketo user

[Anonymous]

We've been using SFDC for nearly 10 years, and Marketo for just a month or so.

Sometime last night or early this AM, our Marketo sync user started creating hundreds of duplicate leads in SFDC. Looking at some of the lead records in Marketo says the creation originated in Salesforce.com.

Marketo support pointed me to this error I'm getting with sync failure: 

Could not execute update [Native Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'and li.sfdc_lead_id is null and p.id=li.lead_person_id and p.sfdc_type is null' at line 3] [User Info: update mkt_person p,mkt_lead_interest li set li.sfdc_lead_id = '00Q4000000roOEYEA2', li.updated_at = '2013-11-21 08:51:49', li.sfdc_synch_timestamp = '2013-11-21 08:51:49', p.sfdc_type = 'Lead' WHERE li.id = and li.sfdc_lead_id is null and p.id=li.lead_person_id and p.sfdc_type is null]

Waiting to hear from SFDC support. 

Possibly related to permissions / role / user change in SFDC? I don't see any evidence of that in SFDC.

Dupe reocrds (25+ each) continuing to be created in SFDC by Marketo user. No lead source.

Ideas?

Thanks,
Gabe

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Cathal, but I'm still dismayed at how long this has taken to find resolution. 

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, This is an open issue that is being investigated by Marketo's engineering team. Any updates will first be provided via your support tickets.

[Anonymous]

Yes, 2+ days and no resolution is very bad. Not at all happy or impressed with Marketo on this.

And the radio silence isn't helping.

We've just had to keep our sync disabled to prevent dupes from appearing, and that's affecting a number of other projects.

[Anonymous]

This is terrible. This is day 2 of spending the whole day de-duping. At least confirm that it's on the Marketo side...

[Anonymous]

Any update here? This is a major issue and I can't believe it hasn't been addressed yet.

[Anonymous]

More evidence that this is an issue on the Marketo side: From what I've seen, we have old lead records that for some reason were being sent from Marketo to SFDC as new lead records, and 20+ new records were being created by the Marketo user in each case, resulting in hundreds of new / dupe records total. 

Of course, this triggered a number of workflow rules in SFDC, which sent out emails to our resellers  and end users alike, which has angered some of our customers and partners. 

Not good, and I'm still waiting for details on cause / resolution on why Marketo caused the Marketo user to behave erradically like this - or evidence that this was a breakdown on the SFDC side, which I'm just not buying. 

[Anonymous]

@Bentacular: That's a sample activity log from one of my affected records in Marketo -> Lead Database -> <search for user> -> <click user ID> -> Activity Log.

@Ann: Agree. 

This is a significant issue, and I'm not impressed with the fact that it's still not resolved. 

I've seen no evidence to suggest that the issue is on the SFDC side, and Marketo support apparently has limited visibility into the bidirectional sync, which seems like a major oversight to me. 

As a fairly new Marketo customer, this is just the latest in a slew of ongoing problems we've had with Marketo.

Very frustrating. 

[Anonymous]

I think it is a problem that Marketo creates these all as new leads due to a sync failure. It shouldn't be doing that, especially since they are all using the same email address. 

So aside from a failure that may be happening in SFDC, it seems like a bug in Marketo, too.

[Anonymous]

How'd you generate that list?

[Anonymous]

SFDC support is now pushing the issue back to Marketo. 

Any updates?

[Anonymous]

@Cathal: Thanks for confimring.

I completed my manual record creation test and syncs worked as expected.

In cases where I'm seeing multiple records, I'm seeing lots of references to this New Lead / Merge Leads activity, as shown below. What is Marketo doing here? I suspect this is related to the issue.

[Anonymous]

Hi gabe, yes it is an open escalation on our side that is being prioritized. FYI. When you see a failure notification for the sync it doesn't necessarily mean the entire sync is stopped/ broke, it can just mean that one element if the sync has failed which would appear to apply in this case.

[Anonymous]

OK, so change on record in Marketo did sync through to SFDC, as expected. 

Next test is to create a record in Marketo (done) and wait for next sync (waiting). If I see lots of dupes in SFDC, that will tell us issue is on Marketo side.

[Anonymous]

Is Marketo support continuing to look into this issue on the Marketo side?

The fact that the test I just did synced from SFDC -> Marketo, and that my Marketo SFDC user is showing successful login suggests issue may, in fact, be on Marketo side.

[Anonymous]

@Ann: T/hanks for the tip on de-duping in Marketo.

I'm on a call with SFDC support now.

We just tested manual creation of lead in SFDC (with my own admin user, not the Marketo user). It did sync over to Marketo as expected (after about 13 mins, despite still seeing the sync failure notice).

We then made a change on new record (with unique email) in Marketo and are waiting to see what happens when next sync runs.

[Anonymous]

I've already had 2 call backs from SFDC tech support and they say, that they did not update salesforce or change any elements. They still can't see what is causing the sync issues....

[Anonymous]

@Gabe -- unfortunately we had to do this manually via the lead database. 

We created a smartlist to identify all of the leads (IIRC, it was something like "lead was created = today" "lead source original = empty"), then sorted by email address. You can combine up to ten at a time.

We had at least 10K, so yeah, it took a long, long time. It had in fact synced to SFDC, as well, so we may have lost some data when combining them, but it was a risk we took.

While this may be an SFDC problem, it seems problematic that Marketo would continue to create leads due to sync failure when they all have the same email address.  

[Anonymous]

Keith,

I have a duplicate alert set up that sends me an alert email whenever a duplicate is create in Marketo.

On the smart list, I have the parameters:
- Lead is Created
- Duplicate Fields -> Field Name is Email Address

I had close to 200 of these alert emails...

[Anonymous]

@Ann: Thanks for info on the dupes / merging. Did you need to do a manual merge via Lead Database? Any way to automate it or do in bulk? I can't imagine going through hundreds of lead records and merging each set manually. 

[Anonymous]

I noticed because one of my lead dev folks contacted me before I got in this morning -- otherwise I would have seen it when I checked my morning report.

My response from Marketo is that this is a SFDC problem that they are trying to address, but it is on that side.


RE: Cleaning up dupes. We had a similar problem about a month ago due to a change that our admin made in SFDC. We basically had to go through all the leads and merge them. It took a long time (at least 6 hours of my time), but that was the only way we could find to fix it.

[Anonymous]

@Keith: I had reports first thing this morning from colleagues who monitor the majority of our incoming leads, and we had several hundred leads in that queue (more than usual for overnight). Also had a report from my colleague who manages our global reseller programs since at least one end-user complained of receiving more than a dozen emails yesterday - via Marketo - from a campaign we launched. 

So not sure why the dupe emails went out to same user, either - unless that's related somehow.

Also open to suggestions on best practices for cleaning up all the dupes within Marketo.

We have RingLead running in Marketo, but not sure that helps in terms of clean-up.