Using API instead of standard SFDC Opportunity Connection?

[ChristinaZuniga]

HALP! We currently use the out of the box connection to SFDC and using contact roles I'm able to get a full circle view of my leads -> customer lifecycle and an OK attribution model.

SFDC Opportunities present some challenges to the company in general because of the way we sell and how we want to use the Product object in SFDC. They are talking about having someone to build us a custom object to use instead of Opportunities. I told the team that Marketo only connects to a few standard objects (like Leads, Opportunities) and that we need that full circle connection via Contact Roles to get us attribution so if they want to build a new interface to sit on top of Opportunities but it makes changes to the actual Opportunity object, it might work, but if they build a separate object that does *not* update Opportunities, Marketo can't see it.

Their answer is "Marketo has an API that we can write code for and grab/push data as needed". Is anyone else doing this that has SFDC but has given up on Opportunities and manages to make it work in a good way?

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Christina,

Yes, there is such an API. See http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/opportunities/

BUT (and it's a big BUT), when you activated the SFDC standard connector, you in fact deactivated the Opportunity API endpoint. The doc reads :

Opportunity APIs are only exposed for subscriptions which do not have a native CRM sync enabled.

The workaround is different : in SFDC, ask your integration team to build a replication mechanism between the new custom object and the opportunities and opportunity contact role. In other terms, each time the custom object is created or update or deleted, an opportunity would be created, updated or deleted, respectively, and the OCR table would also be maintained. We have done this in the past for a customer, and it's not such a big deal. If you really want to avoid devs at all costs, this duplication mechanism could also be acheived with an ETL (with 2 connections to SFDC).

-Greg

[ChristinaZuniga]

Yes, this is exactly what I thought they'd have to do (create the duplication mechanism) but wanted someone with experience to say that's what would have to happen. I did not know about the Opportunity API decativation, so that helps to know. Thank you for your help!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

You are welcome

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Another point: if you go in the duplication path, it might be interesting to isolate these "duplicate" ideas in a separate record type, especially if you have some legacy opportunities or if you consider you might want to use the opportunities again in the future.

-Greg