SDFC Sync with Person Account

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

We are looking to put a Marketo form on our website where we are going to capture information from our Alumni.  We have a large number of Alumni person accounts already in SFDC (and Marketo).  With the form, we want it to create a new lead for any person who we do not already have in our system and for those who are already a person account, have Marketo update their details in SDFC, in the person account.  We have two record types (one for the lead and another for the person account) and we are finding that the person account is not being updated when an existing account has sent information in via the form.

Obviously Marketo knows, based on the email, if the record already exists.  Do we have to map the two sets of fields (from the lead and person account) to the Marketo form and fields?  Also can we define both record type ids in the sync action?

thanks Kris

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hello Kris,

The person account type can be tricky.  It is a conglomeration object so to speak for Marketo.  Its a hybrid Account Object and Contact Object.  In Marketo it looks like a regular Contact with an associated account (itself) .  By default Marketo does not enable the ability to write back values to the Account Object.  This is because in a typical SFDC integration the Account has a one to many relationship.  So if one contact updates an account field that would sync back and then update ALL other contacts under the same account.  It can get very messy and confusing.

In the case of the person Account it makes sense, and you can make the request to support to enable this for the Person Account.  You would just need to make sure the profile your sync user is utilizing in SFDC has the appropriate field and object accesses to write the new Marketo values on the Account fields.

Hope that helps.