Overview

Totango customers create a 360 view of their customers by ingesting data from multiple sources such as CRMs. It is a best practice to enable writing back the information to the source system because Totango is not their system of record.

The write-back attribute setting allows your company to preserve your 360 view by syncing the information back to the origin system.

Supported data connectors:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• MS Dynamics

This article includes the following topics:

• Setting An Attribute To Write-Back
• Setting An Account Assignment To Write-Back 
• Writing-Back An Attribute
• Writing-Back An Account Assignment
• Salesforce Writeback Types For Reference fields
• Salesforce Async bulk write-back
• Known Limitations

Setting An Attribute To Write-Back

• Navigate to Global Settings > Data Management > Data Modeler
• Click the name of the attribute you’d like to edit
• Switch ON the “Enable write-back in real time” toggle in the Source section
• Click save and you’re done.
  
  
  
  If your data is synced using the Legacy Salesforce connector, it will look like this:
  
  Note, in case you do not see the "Enable write-back in real-time" option, contact Totango Support.

Important note, the integration field must be first configured in CRM integration or Legacy Salesforce integration before you'll be able to see it in the Data Modeler page.

Setting An Account Assignment To Write-Back 

• Navigate to Global Settings > User Management > Account Assignment
• Click the name of the Account Assignment attribute you’d like to edit
• Switch ON the “Enable write-back in real time” toggle in the Source section
• Click save and you’re done.
  
  In the case where there are multiple account assignment fields mapped, activate write-back only to one of them as it can cause unexpected behavior regarding Micro-Sync updates. Read more about it in the Q&A section.
  
  
  
  If your data is synced using the Legacy Salesforce connector, it will look like this:
  
  Note, in case you do not see the "Enable write-back in real-time" option, contact Totango Support.
  
  

Important note, the Account Assignment field must be first configured in CRM integration or Legacy Salesforce integration before you'll be able to see it in the Data Modeler page.

Writing-Back An Attribute

Write-back a single or a multivalue attribute is available in the account profile, segments inline updates, user profile, task completion, and Rapid Insights Form.
In case the data for this attribute (per this account) is synced from several connections, you can write-back its data to several data sources. 

Some examples:

• Write-back from Account Profile key info widget
  
  
  
• Write-back from a Rapid Insight Form
  
• Write-back from a segment (inline update)
  
  
  Note, since the write-back is a synchronic action, a detailed outcome message will appear after the sync is done.
  
  
  

Writing-Back An Account Assignment

Write-back an account assignment is available in the account profile, segments inline updates, user profile, task completion, and Rapid Insights Form.

In case the data for this account assignment attribute (per this account) is synced from several connections, you can write-back its data to several data sources. 

Some examples:

• Write-back from Account Profile Account Assignment widget
  
  
  
  
• Write-back from a segment (inline update)
  
  
  Note, since the write-back is a synchronic action, a detailed outcome message will appear after the sync is done.
  
  
• Write-back from a task completion modal
  

Salesforce Writeback Types For Reference Fields

Salesforce 1st level reference fields (like Owner.Email) are supported for write-back.
We identified 2 types of reference fields write-back:

• Update the referenced object
  This is the default type in which the referenced object will be replaced. Meaning that the connected object will point to a different object. This is usually used for object identifiers like Owner.Id or Owner.Email
  
  
• Edit the value of the referenced object
  There are cases where you want to update the value of the referenced object and not replace it. This is usually used for reference fields that are not identifiers, like Owner.Name.
  

Salesforce async bulk write-back

For Salesforce we also support async bulk write-back. Bulk write-back is happening when multiple attributes are updated by the same action. supported actions are:

1. Multiple attribute changes from segments.
2. Multiple attribute changes from SuccessPlays

Same settings of the regular write-back apply to bulk write-back so there is no need for any new setting to activate the async bulk write-back

To see the results of the async bulk write-back, there is a system integration job in the salesforce connector jobs list in Customer Data Hub. The name of this job is "Bulk Write-Back' and it holds all the information of all the bulk write-back jobs done for this Salesforce connection:

Using this job, you can see the status and details of last bulk write-back job and history jobs as well, including all the attributes that were part of each job.

Users can also subscribe to failure notifications of bulk write-back jobs in the Customer Data Hub Notifications Settings:

Bulk Write-Back for Reference Fields 

1. Salesforce reference fields are also supported for async bulk write-back
2. It is not possible to delete a reference field (relevant when using the "Update the Reference Object" option of write-back)
3. If an attribute in Salesforce is read only,  the write-back will fail

Notes

1. Async bulk write-back job takes up to two minutes to start once the attributes change is done in segment or SuccessPlay

Known Limitations

• Write-back is not supported for bulk updates in segments, forms, and forecast dialog.
  
  
  
• Write-back is not supported for user profile header attributes only in the per account sections
  
  
  
• Only Salesforce 1st level reference field (like Owner.Email) is supported for write-back.
  More complex references (like Owner.id.Name) is not supported.
  Since most of the account assignments are based on reference fields, the write-back option is not supported for account assignments
• In case you are using the Salesforce Legacy connector, these are the write-back which will not be supported:
  • List and lifecycle attribute write-back
  • Task completion modal
  • Rapid Insights Forms
  • Account assignment write-back from the Account Profile Account Assignment widget.
• Micro-sync updates are not supported. Micro-sync update is a real-time update of one reference field based on the update of another reference field.
  For example, I have 2 user attributes that are based on reference fields: Owner.Email, Owner.Name. When I write-back the Owner.Email to the source system the Owner.Name is not updated in real-time, it will update in the next sync.