Salesforce Frequently Asked Questions

Read answers to frequently asked questions about the Fivetran Salesforce connector.

Which naming conventions does Fivetran use?

Fivetran follows a set of standard naming conventions for schemas, tables, and columns. To learn more about our naming conventions, read the naming conventions section of our Core Concepts document.

Why is a particular table or column missing?

There are some common reasons that you may not be able to find a Salesforce object that you're looking for:

• Fivetran cannot access the Salesforce object because the connecting user does not have sufficient Salesforce permissions.
• An installed package needs a license to view the associated custom objects. Assign your account a license.
• The missing column represents a "formula" or "compound" Salesforce object field.
• The table name is different from what you expected. Fivetran names the tables it creates in your destination based on the Salesforce "name" field for a given object. This is a field that an organization gives to the object, and it may differ from the display name or internal "label."

Note that we do not sync any pre-aggregated objects or views because you already have access to the underlying source objects. We also do not sync archived objects because of Salesforce's limitations.

Can I sync empty objects and fields?

Fivetran can sync empty objects and fields for your Salesforce connector. For more information, see our Features documentation.

Who sets the values of SystemModStamp?

Fivetran doesn't set the values of SystemModStamp for the Salesforce objects. These values are set by Salesforce.

To provide more insight into our process, Fivetran adds the _fivetran_synced column into each table. This column stores the sync end times for every record in the table.

What happens when I change a field name in Salesforce?

If you change a field label that is displayed in Salesforce reports, it won't affect your connector.

If you change a field name, we keep the old field and add a new field in your destination table. However, old data will not get backfilled, and you have to trigger a table re-sync.

If you add a new column in the destination, any old values in that column won't be backfilled. If you remove permissions to a column and then grant permissions, Fivetran will only sync the new records and not the old ones. To fetch older data, you have to trigger a table re-sync.

What happens if I add new columns or custom fields in Salesforce?

For each account that you connect, we create a different schema in your destination. The schema we create maps closely to the native Salesforce schema so that the data is in a familiar format for you to work with. If the structure of the data in the source changes (for example, you add new columns, custom fields, or change a data type), Fivetran automatically detects and pushes these changes into your destination.

Why is a table not updated every sync?

Not all tables are updated at every sync. When Fivetran finds that an object in the source is not updated for seven days in a row, we switch our strategy to checking that infrequently updated object for new data once a day. When the object is updated in the source again, we return to our usual update strategy.

Because we only check infrequently updated objects once a day, there can be a delay of up to one day when an infrequently updated object is updated in the source for the first time.

Another reason a table is not updated every sync is that it could be a re-import object.

Fivetran automatically detects objects with the replicateable = false value as re-import objects. We re-sync these objects because we can't capture deletes from them. These objects are included in the incremental sync but are re-imported in full at different frequencies.

The re-import frequency of the objects depends on how fast we can ingest data. The faster we can sync a table, the more frequently we will sync it.

We mark the re-imported tables as notRecommended in the dashboard and include a message that we will re-import them in full if they are selected to be synced. We exclude the objects from incremental syncs by default because they degrade performance. However, you can select them to be synced.

Why are Formula Fields not synced?

Fivetran disables syncing formula field values because they cause data integrity problems.

To ensure data integrity, you must recreate the formula fields after loading the data to your destination. To help with this, Fivetran provides the following:

• The FIVETRAN_FORMULA and FIVETRAN_FORMULA_MODEL tables. For more information, see our Formula and Lookup Fields documentation.
• A pre-built, dbt Core-compatible set of data models for Salesforce for automation. For more information, see our Fivetran data models documentation. Find the model in Fivetran's dbt hub.

Why Am I Receiving Incorrect Formula Field Values?

You may receive incorrect formula field values if you are using an older version of the Salesforce Formula Utils dbt package. To resolve the issue, do the following:

• Make sure you are using the latest version of the dbt package.
• Create models using the recommended option.

If you still observe incorrect values, contact our support team.