Segmentation built off SFDC formula field

[Anonymous]

I'm building our segmentation for our Sales Dev Reps based off their territory. Either they own the lead or its owned by a queue and I have a formula field in SFDC to detect territory. I'm wondering if I can even build this out based off an SFDC formula field. Will Marketo detect when the formula field changes and update the segmentation? I couldn't find any confirmation that Marketo could do this. Can anyone confirm? I really want this territory formula field to work for our dynamic emails. Thanks!

[John_Clark1 · Accepted solution]

Hi Emily,

Formula fields do not trigger an update because changes to their values don't update the System Mod Stamp for the object they live on.  For this reason, we don't recommend that you base anything on these fields in Marketo.

Another solution would be for you to make sure that a value actually got written to the object when the formula field changed.  This could be something as a custom field with a date token that would update each time the formula field did.

John

[Josh_Hill13]

But that would have to happen in SFDC, right?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yeah Josh, you'd need to have a trigger. Which kind of makes the formula redundant (since the trigger could probably replicate the formula into a static field).  Still it could be good for distributing responsibilities (like an admin-level person maintains the formula and a system-level developer manages triggers only).

[Caryl_Mostacho]

HI Emily Dick​ - 

As John Clark mentioned above, Marketo can't see the update in SFDC formula fields.   Best solution I've seen to this would be some kind of Salesforce trigger that updates the value of another custom field (say Territory Text field)  in Salesforce with the value of the Territory Formula field. This Territory Text field would then be the field you would use for segmentation in Marketo.

[Anonymous]

This is what I thought. Thanks for confirming!

[Justin_Norris1]

Emily Dick​

Fortunately you can usually do this without code using a Workflow Rule or Process Builder in SFDC -- just replicate the formula logic in the WFR.

[Anonymous]

I sadly remembered after making this post that the field is updated via workflow so my segmentation will work just fine