True Create Date field?

[Danielle_Wong]

We are noticing the Created Date is not accurate. It is taking the date of the most recent record vs the older record when merged. Is that normal? We use Marketo's AutoMerge. 

[Beth_Massura]

Hi Danielle,

As part of the AutoMerge project you would have defined with the Adobe technical consultant the "winner rule", which determines which record's values prevail. I don't recall offhand all the available options for the winner rule, but if your winner rule was to use the most recently created record, that explains why the Created Date is from the most recent record. If your winner rule indicated the opposite, you will want to get in touch with the technical consultant.

Cheers,

Beth Massura

2022 Adobe Marketo Engage Champion

[Danielle_Wong · Accepted solution]

Thanks, I ended up reaching out to the Marketo team and found that the reasoning for the created date being the recent one is because the recent one belonged to the record that Dynamics had. And it will always keep the create date of the winning Dynamics record even if the create date of a Marketo-only record was earlier/older. 

This is causing some inaccuracies when I'm pulling smart lists for new leads created within a certain time frame because some merged records with the wrong create date are being included. 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Okay - I just tested this using the OOTB merge functionality to confirm, when the winning record is the one that was created later than the losing record(s), then the created date of the winning record takes precedence and stays. This is logical too, documentation clearly says that if both winning and losing records have value for a field, then the value in the winning record would persist in the end. This applies to the system fields as well, e.g., Created Date field. So the answer here is to find how Automerge is configured - on what basis is it picking up the winning vs. losing record, and from there go about taking a call to change its config or not (if at all that's possible).

[Danielle_Wong]

Thanks for testing this out.  I connected with Marketo and they did tell me this is expected behavior due to the way the winning records are determined. 

[Darshil_Shah1]

Yes, b/w a lead and contact record, the contact record is always selected as the winning record, and b/w a lead/contact and a Marketo-only record, the Marketo-only record is always processed as the losing record.

[Danielle_Wong]

It seems that with Dynamics and Automerge in Marketo, the created date is going to be an unreliable source of data to determine who is a new lead. Is the only solution to create a custom field for an actual created date? Just want to make sure I am thinking all of my options through. How are other Dynamics users tackling this?

[Darshil_Shah1]

Even in the case of a custom field, the merge behavior wouldn't change IMO - e.g., a Marketo-only and Dynamics synced records when merged, the value in both fields, the system Created Date and the custom Created Date would reflect the winning record's data, i.e., the Dynamics synced record's data in this case, even if the Dynamics synced record was created after the Marketo-only record.

[Danielle_Wong]

I had a similar thought, Darshil. However, my marketo contact suggested a custom field. Which I didn't give a ton of thought about yet because that's not the ideal path I want to take.

If you needed to report on new leads in each of your segmentations, how would you go about it? Do you use Created Date, knowing there is likely false elevated counts due to the merged records?  Or do you exclude people who were part of the merge triggers and possibly underreport if someone was merged during the time frame you're reporting on?