Working with SF Custom Object within Lead

[Ali_Jiwani]

Hi All,

Would like some help when working with Marketo Forms + SF Sync Custom Objects.

Current Hierarchy 

- Lead
-- Certification__c (custom object)
----- Certification Name
----- Certification Start / End / Validity 

We want to create a custom Marketo form with the following fields (open to suggestions)

- Email (primary source for lead matching)

- Certification Name

- Certification Start / End / Validity 

And keep on updating/submitting the form to update a users record both in marketo + SF.
Does the community think it is possible and if so, point us in the correct direction please.

[SanfordWhiteman]

You can’t write Salesforce Custom Objects from Marketo via any built-in mechanism. The copies of SFDC COs in Marketo are read-only on the Marketo side.

The only way to do what you describe would be using a webhook to connect to a Salesforce API endpoint from Marketo. But you would need to ensure the person is synced to an SFDC Lead first (that is, you can’t just call such an endpoint when the person isn’t in SFDC yet). It would require some intelligent timing, making sure the person is created in SFDC and then and only then attaching the CO.

You’d also need to hold the CO data in a temporary field on the Marketo person, for example as JSON in a Textarea field, while you’re waiting to write it to SFDC. Potentially you could store the JSON data for many pending COs in a single Textarea, since it seems like you have a very lightweight object.

Why don’t you detail your specific business goals, because I have some doubt that the above design is desirable? (It is possible, but has a lot of moving parts.)

[Ali_Jiwani]

We already have users with SF + marketo.
We run a LMS. 

What we want is to add users course progress (status = in_progress/complete)  into marketo + SF so we could then do our marketing activities accordingly. We donot want to use the SF API to update the leads relational object but rather marketo (form possibly) to this action. 

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

It seems like you didn’t read my response closely.

Marketo cannot itself create or update Salesforce Custom Objects. There is no such feature. You can only read Marketo’s copies of the COs that you’ve chosen to sync.

The only way to create/update ”using Marketo” is to have Marketo call a service via webhook. The service performs the create/update the SFDC API. However: this isn’t really “using Marketo” in the formal sense. It’s passing the data from Marketo to another service, and Marketo won’t have any idea of what the webhook actually did (though it will see the new objects on the next sync).

[Ali_Jiwani]

Thankyou so very much