Salesforce Sync - API are read only or not available

[dkbpx]

Hello!  I am looking to confirm my understanding of all limitations when you enable the Marketo Salesforce sync and came across documentation that seems to contradict itself.  My understanding was that whilst some objects couldn't be updated they could still be read.  See the first three points which support my understanding, but then see the last point which seems to contradict the first three points, and that those objects API are not available.  

• Company APIs are read-only access for subscriptions which have SFDC Sync or Microsoft Dynamics Sync are enabled. https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/companies/  
• Opportunity APIs are read-only access for subscriptions which have SFDC Sync or Microsoft Dynamics Sync are enabled. https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/opportunities/  
• Sales Person APIs are read-only access for subscriptions which have SFDC Sync or Microsoft Dynamics Sync are enabled.  Sales Persons are a type of person record that are the sales owners of lead records.  They are related to Lead records by the externalSalesPersonId field on each Lead record.  When a Lead is related to a Sales Person by a populated externalSalesPersonId field, the corresponding Lead Owner lookup fields are populated for that lead record in Marketo, allowing usage of the corresponding filters and tokens. https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/sales-persons/ 
  
  
  
• For instances with a native CRM integration enabled (either Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce.com), the Company, Opportunity, Opportunity Role, and Sales Person APIs are disabled.  The records are managed through the CRM when enabled and cannot be accessed or updated via Marketo’s APIs. https://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/  
  Related to this, if anyone knows of any other limitations when you turn on the Salesforce sync that may not be in the documentation? 
  
  Thank you.

[Katja_Keesom · Accepted solution]

The situation is as follows:

• The objects you indicate as they exist in Marketo can indeed only be written to by the natice SFDC/MSD sync when you have either of those activated.
• Other API users can use a GET call to retrieve data from those Marketo objects, but they can not use a POST call to update or add any records to them. So they can effectively read from, but not write to those Marketo endpoints.
• These other API users can send data to the Leads endpoint, where any company-related fields are only open to POST to if there is no externalCompanyId value populated on the lead record.

I hope that clarifies somewhat.

[dkbpx]

Thank you very much Katja, I really appreciate your time.

[Darshil_Shah1]

When Marketo is integrated with a CRM (SFDC/MSD), then for the Lead, Contact, Campaign, and Campaign Member CRM objects the sync happens bi-directionally. But for the other standard CRM objects, i.e., Account, Opportunity, and User (aka sales owners) the sync happens uni-directionally from CRM -> Marketo. It is due to this reason only the GET calls for these objects are available to use once it is synced with a CRM. These aren't technically any sort of limitations of integrating Marketo with the CRM, instead, these are blocked so no updates are being made to these objects from Marketo (and logically, Opportunities, Accounts, and Sales Users are managed in the CRM). I don't think you should have any issues querying the Account, Opportunity, and User objects using APIs even post the sync. We normally don't use these endpoints, but I tried the Companies GET endpoint on an instance with SFDC integration and it got back the results fine.

There are several other things along the lines of permission sets, field mapping, visibility, etc. that one needs to know before integrating a CRM with Marketo to ensure a smooth integration process. 

[dkbpx]

Thank you very much Darshil, I really appreciate your time.