Warning: Program Member Custom Fields (PCMF) Won't Sync Lead Record Doesn't Initially Sync

[Sheila-SEMI]

Just want to give other's visibility and a heads up on this issue. 

We have a program that sets some program member custom fields (PMCF) which sync to campaign member custom fields. Generally, the sync is working fine. However, we are seeing an issue in this case:

If the initial sync of a person fails (say there is a bad picklist value in a standard field) and then the issue gets fixed, when the person does finally sync to the SFDC campaign and becomes a member, the PMCF field values do not sync to the campaign member custom fields. The only way to get the PMCF fields to finally sync is if the value in the PCMF field changes. 

@Darshil_Shah1 Was able to confirm this behavior. See: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/after-initial-sync-failure-program-member-data-not...

I submitted a case to Marketo. It was escalated to engineering but then I got a message back that this is expected behavior (confirmed by the Product manager). I'm somewhat at a loss as to how to deal with this response. 

It is difficult to find records that didn't sync because of an error that was then later corrected. Even if you find the record, and sync it to SFDC, you would have to go into the record and clear/change each of the PCMF fields from the value it should be to something else and then change it back to the correct value in order to have the values sync to the associated campaign member record. This seems so untenable and data will be incorrect.

If anyone has recommendations on ways to figure out which PCMF fields didn't sync and then automate the update/fix, please share. It would have to be done on a program by program basis since that's where the PCMF fields are accessible.
 

Thanks and consider yourself warned!

[Katja_Keesom]

Hmm, I would raise this as an idea to consider changing the behaviour. I would definitely second that.

[Darshil_Shah1 · Accepted solution]

Agreed with both of you here! It's reasonable to expect that once the validation errors are resolved, the field should automatically sync with the SFDC w/o the user having to make an additional update just to sync the value over to the SFDC. Thank you for posting this here, @Sheila-SEMI! If not already posted, I can post an idea re this on the ideas board and link it here if anyone wants to upvote it. 🙂

[Tkling]

I've had issues in general with info syncing back to Salesforce from my PCMFs in Marketo... I've tried different variations of smart campaigns to update program member data and push to Salesforce, but no success. I have everything set up according to this blog - https://nation.marketo.com/t5/marketo-whisperer-blogs/salesforce-sync-deep-dive-part-3-marketo-progr... - but I'm not sure if the smart campaign is completely set up correctly as there's only screenshots in this blog. Would anyone have an example to share of how a smart campaign should be set up?

Further info: I'm using the PCMFs as form fields (questions to be answered), and the values from the responses are what needs to be passed back to Salesforce Custom Campaign Member objects.