SFDC Sync: State Picklist Error

[Anonymous]

We have some leads with non-standardised state fields that are attempting a sync from Marketo to SFDC using the Sync Lead to SFDC action. When this happens, we get the following error before syncing fails:

"Failed: FIELD_INTEGRITY_EXCEPTION: There's a problem with this state, even though it may appear correct. Please select a state from the list of valid states.: State/Province"

I'm thinking for a quick solution we could just disable the State picklists in SFDC, so they are just a string. My worry is that Marketo will still try to sync to a picklist type and therefore fail. Has anybody done this and can advise? Or any suggestions on a better way to tackle the issue?

Any discussion is welcomed! 🙂

[Josh_Hill13]

Should you try to fix the State on the Marketo side first?

[Anonymous]

Josh: That would normally be a good place to start, certainly! I should have mentioned in my OP that these leads in particular are based in the UK, and so the State fields typically contain counties such as "North Yorkshire" (so it's actually useful/correct data). 

How do you normally manage this sync for leads from countries with no official states? Is it better to create a custom field for "County" and set the State fields to blank in this case?

Cheers!

[Kenny_Elkington]

Hey Adam,

If you can't easily normalize the data in Marketo, you might want to look into building an APEX trigger for Upserts on Leads/Contacts to change this before validation is applied.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Kenny - I'll keep the APEX trigger option in mind in the future. After taking into consideration the nature of both of your comments, it looks like the better option would be to manipulate the data before it goes into SFDC rather than disabling state picklists.

I think I'll either create a daily maintenance batch campaign which corrects this in Marketo, or even place it in the SFDC sync trigger campaign itself.

[Delinda_Tinkey1]

Have you successfully implemented State and Country picklists with Marketo? I'm seeing conflicting results in the community. Thanks!

[Delinda_Tinkey1]

That is...the SFDC standardized Stand and Country pick lists.

[Tom_Keefe3]

Hi Everyone

I've used the SFDC Country/State picklists in the past and never had an issue. However now I am encountering that even when I fix the Country/State values in Marketo then try to sync to SFDC (initial syn, they have never been in SFDC) I still get the same error. Has anyone else encountered this? basically the only thing I can do is delete and recreate the record then it sync correctly.

[Marcel_Hobizal]

I know this is an old post, but did anyone ever find a solution to this issue?  We just started having this same issue. 

[Traci_Taylor]

I'm having this same problem, and it's actually deleting all US leads/contacts from Salesforce when syncing over from Marketo. I've updated the "Normalize" campaigns multiple times and have gone back and forth between 2-digit state code and full state name. But nothing seems to work.