[SalesForce] Why don’t we see ‘synchronized’ as a Data Source tab within Marketing Cloud’s Contact Builder

Paul,

I think part of your confusion is the ever-changing terminology and methodology of Marketing Cloud.

Data Stream is the broad term for the connectivity between Salesforce (Sales & Service Clouds) and Marketing Cloud. "Synchronized Data Extensions" is a feature located under "Data Sources" in the Contact Builder app. "Synchronized Data Extensions" is one way to access Salesforce data in Marketing Cloud. That data can be updated as often as every 15 minutes.

Synchronized Data Sources reference

But, this connectivity via Data Stream (and Synchronized Data Extensions) only moves in one direction--from Salesforce to Marketing Cloud.

To send data from Marketing Cloud to Salesforce, you need to use "Sales & Service Cloud" activities in a Journey or use AMPScript in a Landing Page or Email.

Sales & Service Cloud Canvas Activities reference

AMPScript reference for updating a Salesforce record

The documentation should give you a place to start. StackExchange and Marketing Cloud support can help fill in the gaps. Feel free to reach out to me and we can set up a call if you think that would help.

--Karl

Out of the box, you can only connect one SF instance to your marketing cloud instance. To connect to more than one SF instance you would need to have multi- org provisioned in your account. Proceed with caution as it comes with a myriad of challenges and is irreversible.

Copied in some answers i found in the success community:

some of the considerations for Multi-Org (MO) that you need to account for:

1. Each BU will need to be separately configured, even if they are connected to the same org. There is no "inheritance" of the connection concept at all in this scenario. This includes configuration of every user within BU's.

2. MO once enabled can't be disabled (just stating here for completeness)

3. All Contacts as well as All Subscribers will contain contacts from all BU's. While you can restrict access to All Subs (by the way this can be achieved via permissions as well as business rule) currently if you need to prevent access to All Contacts (via contact builder) you'll need to restrict users from accessing contact builder all together.

4. With MO each BU has it's own synchronized DE setup. If you utilize same integration user across more than 1 BU synchronized DE's will be the same for all BU's that are connected with that user (and the same org, sandbox and prod will be considered separate orgs).

5. With MO Journey Builder functions within respective BU's context, therefore tracking and contact data actually works more intuitively comparing to one org setup

6. You'll definitely need a custom preference center and would need to carefully consider all the unsubscribe/resubscribe flows, where these might be triggered from and what systems should be updated and when (e.g. maintaining CRM status vs MC subscriber status). And how to distinguish test from prod contact.

7. Your contact utilization will account for all contacts/leads/users that reside in sandbox and prod orgs. Just be mindful of that as this is one common oversight.