Oct 2, 2020

Migrating from Pardot Salesforce Connector V1 to V2: What I Found

Pardot has finally made a migration path available for the Pardot to Salesforce Connector version 1 to version 2. The issue these days with remaining on V1 is that it requires a named user as the "connector user", which either requires you to burn a license to use as the "connector" or use a real user, which means that said user cannot have an expiring password (ideally) and all changes that Pardot makes appear to have come from that person. Not ideal. Until recently, if you had V1, you were just stuck with it. With the migration path, you can finally get the advantage of having a "connector-only" user called "B2BMA Integration" without burning a license (hereinafter referred to as B2BMA).

Having a user that you know is all things Pardot opens up some nice options in Salesforce such as:

Reporting on Leads created by B2BMA-- obvious they came from Pardot
Reporting on Tasks created by B2BMA, again, obvious where they came from
Creating workflows around things done by B2BMA, last updated by, created by, etc.
Creating permission sets that only the B2BMA user has that allows it do things you don't want other users to be able to do, like ignoring duplicate rules or ignoring validation rules, or allowing population of field values that aren't in picklists.

Now, to the upgrade. As is often the case with things Pardot: "The Process Cannot Be Reversed". So that automatically gives one pause before pushing the button. But, this client was tired of seeing himself (as the connector user) updating everyone's records (via Pardot).

The official documentation makes it look easy enough-- which once again always makes you a little worried-- I looked around online to see if I could find anything from anyone who'd actually done it, and found nothing.

So I took the plunge and went ahead and did it. And lo and behold, it wasn't too bad. Took about 15 minutes at most. I put together a step by step PDF of the process end to end so you know exactly what to expect. Note that this was an org that did not have business units or marketing data sharing. So I cannot comment on what the process would be like if that describes your org. For the rest with plain vanilla connectors, this process should be straightforward as outlined. Download my step by step overview below.