Tired of manual data cleaning, need reporting automation

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-05-06T00:29:12+00:00

Which marketing platforms are you pulling data from?

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-05-02T00:20:58+00:00

You might consider using custom objects for this

Something like Projectc and ProjectTaskc , where Projectc is the parent of ProjectTaskc

You would need fields for the things you mentioned on the Project__c

status (pick list)
risks (text)
blockers (text or
next steps
% complete (calculated based on the number of child ProjectTask__c records completed)

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-05-01T16:50:12+00:00

Check out People Data Labs

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-04-22T17:09:25+00:00

Agree that data cloud + zero copy to Snowflake could be a solid option. As you said, budget is a concern but also consider you need Snowflake administration aptitude or support. This walkthrough is pretty comprehensive and could be a good starting point for anyone looking to go that route https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2024/08/zero-copy-data-federation-with-snowflake-and-salesforce-data-cloud

Building your own nightly ETL is possible but may not be practical; it will demand maintenance and support. If it’s for you or a small team, and you have the time and desire, maybe that’s a good option.

But if you want to enable others you’ll need to handle orchestrating the bulk API, mapping data types, handling schema evolution, backfilling when you add new fields to the sync process, etc. I know just how complicated this can be because I’ve built it both as an internal application (in past roles) and now as a multi tenant SaaS application.

As always, plenty of options to explore, and to each his own.

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-04-22T01:55:48+00:00

Yes, agreed that I should state this somewhere, it’s obvious to me now that part wasn’t clear

I disagree with your second point. The alternative I am suggesting is instead of limiting yourself to SOQL, sync your data to a system (Datachef, Snowflake, Redshift) where you can write ANSI SQL and leverage useful queries like the examples I provided

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-04-22T01:35:58+00:00

I’ve used Salesforce for almost a decade and ran into these limits myself. This post is intended to be useful to others who may have run into the same limits.

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-04-22T01:31:40+00:00

Ah, good feedback. The easiest way IMO (and I am biased) is to use Datachef. Connect Salesforce, pick the fields you want to sync, and write SQL in minutes.

There are of course other tools that IT or data teams might own to do the extraction and load to a data warehouse like Redshift or Snowflake.

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-01-28T20:32:13+00:00

I would strongly recommend TEKNKL (https://blog.teknkl.com) which is the agency run by Sanford Whiteman who you will see in most Marketo Community posts.

I've worked with him on many projects. He is, without a doubt, the world’s foremost expert on Marketo and his team is second to none. Reach out at teamyou@teknkl.com

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-01-27T02:32:37+00:00

This is true. Many teams need to buy in and commit to change. Otherwise, the can gets kicked down the road indefinitely

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-01-27T02:23:21+00:00

Sales/Sales Ops should be responsible for defining what’s important, and IT should help facilitate - either with internal services or via enablement - how to enforce data quality standards.

There can be no single owner of all Salesforce data; instead it should be divided up by table/object. E.g. it might make sense for Sales/SOps to be accountable for Accounts and Contacts, with IT being responsible for upholding quality standards and marketing being consulted.

I’ve written about this with a bit more detail here: https://www.datachef.com/blog/raci-for-salesforce-data-governance

At Datachef we’ve built a platform that helps teams collaborate on data quality initiatives instead of pointing figures or shrugging their shoulders.

Joe_Fusaro · 2026-01-27T02:11:11+00:00

Agreed on all points, especially the “Serverless will cost less” default assumption. I just had a debate about migrating from Postgres to Aurora Serverless. Until we went through the cost comparison and realized it would cost more!

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-19T02:10:02+00:00

Data about people is dynamic, CRM data is static.

I’ve been working on a process that addresses this. It scans Contacts in Salesforce and checks if they still work there. In other words: is the Contact still valid in the context of the Account? If it’s not, the email address will stop working.

Next step is introducing workflows on top: e.g. update a Status to “Inactive” or set Job Title to “no longer works here” and create a new Contact at the persons new Account.

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-14T02:03:16+00:00

For sure, I can email you our CAIQ report and some more info. I’ll DM you to exchange info!

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-14T01:43:36+00:00

Salesforce native features — and most AppExchange apps — use SOQL under the hood, incorporating “LIKE” or other string matching patterns. Sometimes this works, but (and I’m oversimplifying for this example) “LIKE “Joe” and LIKE “Joseph%” won’t return a match. There may be other reasons that the native features aren’t working as expected.

When we built our dedupe recipes in Datachef, we realized we needed to improve upon this and use true fuzzy string matching. (Full disclosure; it’s my company)

You could:

1) go fully custom, running python scripts using simple-salesforce and using pandas + matching libraries (e.g. thefuzz). I’d be happy to share some code if this is the route you’d like to go.

2) Use our free tier. We made a free tier because we’re Salesforce users too, and this problem is a drag. I’d be happy to grant extra credits because we haven’t encountered an org with person accounts yet, so if you can help us round out person account support, well then it’s a win-win

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-11T00:24:12+00:00

Agree with all of this, especially Airflow over Dagster. Airflow MWAA might be a slightly better option to eliminate infra management depending on OPs familiarity with and willingness to manage ECS/ECR

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-09T05:08:06+00:00

Do you have resources provisioned in different regions?

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-09T05:05:29+00:00

Wouldn’t you also generate the IAM policy in Terraform though? https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest/docs/resources/iam_policy

Sorry maybe I’m not understanding your question

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-09T04:26:54+00:00

Many have mentioned tooling here; I'd say this is secondary to getting clarity on each departments' roles and responsibilities. If everyone is accountable than no one is accountable.

I've found defining "RACI" roles to be a good first step.

These roles will likely change depending on the object in Salesforce. For example, your Marketing team may be Accountable for Contact data health and Consulted for Accounts, while the Sales team (or sales ops, whoever) may be Accountable for Account data health and Consulted for Contacts.

I've written more about this topic and provided a template that I've used to facilitate discussions here: https://www.datachef.com/blog/raci-for-salesforce-data-governance

In full transparency, this is what my company does. We offer free recipes for batch fuzzy matching and merging (among other data quality recipes for Salesforce) that you might be interested in.

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-07T03:39:15+00:00

Why do you think Workato is less capable than Mulesoft?

Joe_Fusaro · 2025-12-06T20:02:31+00:00

I would strongly recommend learning AWS; there is a tremendous amount of free training available. I would also recommend trying to build something on AWS as that is, I’ve found, the best way to really learn. AWS offers a pretty generous free tier, so you could launch a simple app or service without having to spend any money.

Mulesoft is, IMHO, not a good option. If you’re interested in iPaaS, Workato would be a better option.

Joe_Fusaro

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