Sync issue from Marketo to SF after "Hide from Marketo"

[Kristof]

Hey Community,

we started seeing Marketo-SF sync error notifications (see attached) and are confused. Below is the description of the flow based on example of one of the leads:
1. Person unsubscribes in Marketo
2. Sync goes to SF marking them as "true" for the SF field: Opt out
3. Sync goes from SF to Marketo marking our custom field "Hide from Marketo" as true. This means that in SF this lead is hidden from future synchs between Marketo and SF. 
4. Then, if there is any attribute update on this lead in Marketo (i.e. vertical update shown on screenshot), then Marketo tries to sync it to SF, and the sync issue notification comes up.

We are just confused - is this on our side (Marketo) or on SalesOps side (SF)? Of course "Hide from Marketo" is our own custom field update process, but we are trying to identify where the correction in this process should be made. GOAL: after the lead in SF is hidden from Marketo updates, then it should NOT attempt to sync anymore but it mistakenly still tries to sync - so how could we switch it off?

Thanks for any hints,
Kris

[Michael_Florin · Accepted solution]

Let's see if I understand this: You have a custom sync filter enabled in Salesforce that prevents records from syncing down to Marketo. And that sync filter also prevents Marketo from updating the record. 

So what you're experiencing functionally is correct and desired, but you don't like the fact that Marketo tries to sync it. Is that right? I don't have an answer on that to be honest, and I understand that you don't like this fact. Question is: Why don't you delete this record from Marketo? It's exactly the point of this sync filter that a Salesforce record is not supposed to be in Marketo. And it will never ever sync again, unless the checkbox switches to FALSE in Salesforce. (You cannot restart the sync in Marketo).  And if the sync is restarted in Salesforce, Salesforce would create the record again. Deleting the record would remove the fact that Marketo tries to sync it.

If there's another way of preventing Marketo to even try, I don't know.

[Darshil_Shah1]

To shed more light, this is expected when you cut the sync off via the custom sync filter in the place but still have the record in Marketo, which on update will try to sync over to the corresponding synced record in the Salesforce (of course, via the native sync).

 In this case, your lead in the example used to sync, which is why they exist on both systems, then the Hide from Marketo field update to True activated the filter for it and you can no longer sync them from Marketo (i.e., it's getting filtered by the custom sync filter in place). IMO the only way to stop this error is by either re-enabling the sync by updating the "Hide from Marketo" field to False in Salesforce or just getting rid of the record in Marketo (i.e., deleting the person record from Marketo after stopping the sync) if you don't care about losing all the activity data (and Marketo-only unsynced data) leading up to the person unsubscribing as upon re-enabling the sync, SFDC will create a new person record in Marketo which will of course not have the all the person activities intact in the activity log along with other Marketo-only unsynced data (e.g., you might have some Marketo-only fields that you aren't syncing over to the Salesforce).

If you haven't already, you should consider reading these well-traveled articles on Custom Sync Filter: "Sync with Marketo" Mysteries Part 1  and "Sync with Marketo" Mysteries Part 2. I hope you find this helpful. Let us know if you have questions. 🙂 

[Kristof]

Thanks a lot @Darshil_Shah1 & @Michael_Florin !

The process you both described is exactly what I had in mind. 

So we will most probably need to delete on our end this type of leads from Marketo. 

And thanks for the links to the sync articles - very helpful.