How to Synch Your Eventbrite and Salesforce Accounts: Part 1

I recently set out to integrate a non-profit client’s Eventbrite account with their Salesforce NPSP. I had never done that before, so I immediately dug through documentation on both tools to understand in detail how the integration works. I learned quite a bit in the process, so I’m going to share Massa’s lessons-learned and expert tips with you over a series of blogs in the next few weeks.

My project began by creating their Salesforce installation and migrating over years of data from ActOn. After about 6 months working in Salesforce, we were ready to integrate their Eventbrite data so they could access the insightful reports on who was attending their events. But imagine the size of my eyes seeing that they had 6 years and roughly 200 events in their Eventbrite account!

If I have one piece of advice before you get started, it’s this: resist the urge to be in a hurry. If you do not have time to thoroughly plan a migration the first time, how will you ever find time to correct the mistakes you might make from not carefully planning?

But to make the time go a little faster, here’s the first installment of what I learned to make the process easier on you, your client and the data.

The First Three Steps You MUST Take before You Integrate Eventbrite and Salesforce

Step One: Read Eventbrite Documentation

SaaS tools usually have lots of online documentation, and I recommend you read through the Eventbrite integration to Salesforce guide as your very first step. Here’s the guide as of May 2019.

There is always something to learn in these guides that will help you make preliminary decisions to make your migration or synch of data much smoother! To riff on the old adage I first heard watching This Old House on PBS: measure twice, cut once. In data migration, read everything twice before you move data.

You’ll have different pockets of knowledge about both platforms than I did, but here are a few things I learned:

• How Eventbrite “matches” its buyers/attendees with Salesforce contacts
• How to set the Lead conversion process to help you convert Leads Eventbrite creates into Contacts in Salesforce
• Choosing between integrating ALL events at one time or one at a time for the initial integration

Step Two: Create a Salesforce Sandbox for Testing

Salesforce offers a sandbox installation where you can practice your Eventbrite synch before you actually do it. This is very handy, and it is FREE!

Here are instructions on how to create your Salesforce sandbox from the Apex Developer Guide.

Step Three: Authentication between Eventbrite and Salesforce

This is a fairly simple step, but if you do not set it up FIRST, the synch will not work and it may take you awhile to figure out why! Here it is:

EventbriteSync can only synch data from the administrator Eventbrite account. If you are NOT the Eventbrite administrator, you’ll want to reach out to the administrator on the main account before you import data with EventbriteSync.

Easy!

Next time, I will dive into mapping data from Eventbrite to Salesforce

Food for Thought: Genovese Ragu

Speaking of things you need to plan carefully, this recipe isn’t one of them! It is a slow cooker ragu.

When I hear the word “ragu,” I used to immediately think of the tomato sauce in a jar that we can buy at American grocery stores to put over our pasta dishes. After visiting Tuscany a few years back, I learned that ragu is actually a meat sauce without tomatoes – at all! For you etymology nerds, ragu is actually the Italian version of the French word ragout. Think Napoleon conquering Italy to imagine how ragout traveled to Italy from France.

So here is one of my favorite ragu recipes, which I got from Cooks’ Illustrated: Pasta Genovese. Did I mention it is a slow cooker recipe? Their recipes are gated for members only, but here is a cook who gave them credit and then put the recipe on her website! It will make your brains fall out.

And oh yeah, I didn’t use penne pasta; I made my own wide ribbon flat pasta (not spaghetti or fettuccine) because the wide ribbon stands up to the meat sauce very well! Buon appetito!