SFDC is Deleted field

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am working on a data cleanup project for our Marketo/SFDC instance and came across the SFDC is Deleted field. I assumed this is a system managed field and by what I've read so far that assumption is correct. However, when I create a smart list with only this field as a filter it only shows me 32 names while the activity filter "Lead was Deleted from SFDC" gives me over 2600 names. I noticed that the SFDC is Deleted field is mapped to the Contact, should this be mapped to the Lead instead? Or is it best practice to set this up manually with a campaign that flags SFDC = Deleted to true when the activity is recorded?

Appreciate any insights!

Thanks,

Arthur

[Josh_Hill13]

I suspect that the field SFDC is Deleted is a field a previous manager put in to flag leads that were deleted in SFDC, but not Marketo.

this is NOT the same as Lead Was Deleted in SFDC - which is a filter in Marketo based on activity.

[Anonymous]

No it's really a system field, it's mentioned in this article as well: SFDC Sync: Deleting a Lead/Contact - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

"Marketo doesn't automatically delete people just because leads were deleted in Salesforce. Rather a field “SFDC Is Deleted” flag is set to true. You can trigger off this field to delete in Marketo if desired."

For some reason this is not working on leads that are not Contacts in Marketo.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Interesting.. In our instance it is also only connected at the contact level, but it definitely is a system field.

Curious to see if anyone else has insights on this!

[Darrell_Alfons2]

same!

[Casey_Grimes · Accepted solution]

OK, so this isn't that uncommon: it just requires a bit more nuanced understanding of how the Marketo-Salesforce sync works.

When a record is deleted from Salesforce, what's supposed to happen is that the sync sends both a data value in the form of "SFDC is Deleted = True" and an Activity Log action that Lead Was Deleted from SFDC.  Likewise, the action is usually the only reliable indicator for Leads (and, depending on sync failures, can actually be logged multiple times.) However, there are many reasons why you may only get the "Lead was Deleted..." action or nothing at all if the record is a Contact. Contributing factors include:

- If a sync is interrupted at any point in time between Marketo and SFDC and a record is deleted, Marketo actually will not receive any notification that the record is deleted; it just fails to ever sync back due to having an old SFDC ID on file.

- Likewise, if a record temporarily isn't visible to the sync user, the same effect happens.

- If a record converts from Lead to Contact, it's a toss-up as to whether the converted Lead will pass the ID correctly to the new Contact. This one seems to be time-sensitive.

- If record types move around or are deleted, this seems to cause issues on deletion flags

- Records that come in and out of the SFDC recycle bin will have issues at times

The best way to check for records which were truly deleted with this discrepancy is to see which still have SFDC IDs for Lead/Contact objects and attempt to resync them. Those that fail will have been fully deleted.

As for the IsDeleted field only being synced to Contacts, this is typical and expected setup.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Courtney, that clears it up for us. During the database cleanup we've been doing a lot of moving around and tested a few different sync setups so that must've messed it up.