Create a visual data flow diagram to understand your marketing tech stack
As an admin who takes over a Marketo Engage instance that has been live for years, it is like a mission impossible to audit and tidy up the instance efficiently. When Adobe Marketo Champion (2019), Kelly Jo Horton, stepped into a long-established instance, she tackled this challenge by creating a diagram of “Lead and data sources” to familiarize herself with the data universe. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create your own data flow diagram by building upon the examples shared by Kelly Jo Horton. Let’s get to know your MarTech ecosystem!
Why create an architecture diagram for your inherited instance?
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Familiarize yourself with the marketing tech stack you inherited from a live instance. All Marketing Operation Managers/Platform Operations Managers are encouraged to do this exercise when starting at a new company. This creation process enables admin users to see the full picture of the data and activities sent from external integrations to Marketo Engage and to easily troubleshoot the API errors.
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Familiarize yourself with the key stakeholders who manage the external integrations. A tip that Kelly Jo Horton uses to identify the stakeholders quickly is to reference the list of API users.
- Navigate to the ‘Integration>LaunchPoint’ tab in the ‘Admin’ section. Learn more about how to navigate to the ‘LaunchPoint’ tab: Create a Custom Service for Use with REST API.
- Find API usage statistics by API user in the Integration>Web Services tab in the API Call Information section. By clicking on the API call number, you can view the specific individual calls made by each user.
How to do this visual data flow diagram exercise
Step 1: Current State Diagram
Create a “Current State” diagram. Here is an example:
Step 2: Future State Diagram
Create a “Future State” diagram that can be used when presenting the technology and systems roadmap to non-technical stakeholders. Here is an example:
Step 3: Technical Version
Create a technical version that shows details like the API username for each integration, a short description of the type of data being pushed to Marketo Engage or pulled from Marketo Engage, and a detailed diagram of any middleware flows and triggers. Here is an example:
What’s Next?
Get Started with Examples:
Download one of the sample data flow diagrams to map out the current state of your marketing tech stack, person and data flow, or create a diagram for your data universe from scratch as you audit the instance:
These are a few tools that you can use: draw.io (Google Docs), Adobe XD, Figma, Gliffy (in Confluence)
What if there are architecture diagrams already? New team members could have different perspectives. There is value in having new Marketo Engage admins do this exercise as part of their onboarding process and sharing it with others.
Authors
Kelly Jo Horton
Adobe Marketo Champion (2019)
Senior Client Partner at Etumos
Amy Chiu
Adoption & Retention Marketing Manager, Adobe
