CRM sync is delayed

How long does it take for Salesforce or Hubspot to sync?

If you are connecting Salesforce or Hubspot to Unify for the first time, it may take a few hours for the initial sync to fully complete. You may not be able to reference your CRM fields in the audience builder or exclusions at first, but those will show up once the CRM sync has fully completed. This should take at most 24 hours - if you are having any issues past this, please reach out to our support team!

Note: Salesforce contacts must have an email address to sync to Unify – contacts without email addresses will not appear in Unify even if they are associated with synced accounts. If contacts are missing for this reason, you’ll need to add email addresses to those contact records in Salesforce.

For other sync issues, expired integration credentials may be the cause. This can happen when your CRM integration user's credentials expire, leading to authentication errors during sync attempts.

How often does Salesforce or Hubspot sync?

We will typically sync data every 15 minutes. This should pull in changes to any CRM fields as well as new, updated, or deleted records. If a lot of data has changed within your CRM since the previous sync, the next sync might take a bit longer than usual. If you are having any issues, reach out to support and we can initiate a manual refresh.

When you delete records in Salesforce or HubSpot, those deletions will sync to Unify during the next regular sync cycle (typically within 15 minutes). When contacts are deleted in your CRM, the associated people and companies in Unify will also be deleted. Note that contacts without associated accounts will still be pulled into Unify by default, and Unify will automatically create company records for them.

Salesforce field updates: Unify can only write default values to empty fields in Salesforce - it cannot overwrite existing data. If you need to update fields that already contain values, you'll need to set up custom triggers on the Salesforce side to handle these updates.

Troubleshooting Salesforce Field Updates When Sync Appears Successful

When Unify reports successful sync but your Salesforce fields aren't updating as expected, the issue often lies in field mapping or object-level limitations rather than sync timing.

Verify Field Mapping: Mapping to the wrong field can cause syncs to appear successful in Unify while failing to update your intended fields in Salesforce. Double-check that your Play nodes are mapped to the correct Salesforce fields.

Object-Level Limitations:

• Company intent level and score only write to Salesforce Accounts, not Leads. If you're expecting to see intent data on Lead records, it won't populate. Check your field mappings to confirm the “Unify Intent Level” company field is mapped to Account objects.

• Accounts must have both a Company Name and a valid domain (Website field) to sync. Missing or invalid domains will prevent writeback from occurring.

Diagnostic Steps:

1. Navigate to Settings → Integrations → Salesforce → Errors (READ) to identify ingest issues such as missing Website/domain fields.

2. Check Settings → Salesforce Integration → Skipped Records → Account write errors and hover over any errors to see why records were skipped.

Picklist Configuration Requirements: When mapping Unify fields to Salesforce picklists, you must set a default value in the Unify→Salesforce field mapping—Unify cannot write to picklists without a default configured. Multi‑select picklist fields are not supported and will cause sync failures if mapped to Unify.

Recommended Field Type Mappings:

• Ideal picklist candidates – Create a picklist with values such as:

  • Reply classification fields (Unify Initial Reply Classification, Unify Most Recent Reply Classification): Positive, Objection, Neutral, Automated, Negative

  • Sequence status fields: Active, Paused, Finished: Completed, Finished: Replied, Finished: Bounced, Finished: Unsubscribed, Finished: Do Not Contact

• Use text fields instead – Unify Initial Reply Tags and Unify Most Recent Reply Tags should be mapped to text fields in Salesforce, not picklists, to allow flexible tagging.

Merged CRM records: When you merge records in HubSpot or Salesforce, the merged records may not automatically sync correctly to Unify. This can result in duplicate or outdated records appearing in your audience filters and sequences. If you've recently performed record merges in your CRM and notice discrepancies in Unify, contact support to run a cleanup script that will reconcile the merged records.

Duplicate CRM records can cause contacts to incorrectly fail audience criteria or appear missing from sequences. When duplicates exist, Unify may evaluate a record that lacks the required field values (for example, a duplicate without a Recent Conversion value), even if another duplicate record has the correct data. As a temporary workaround, you can manually populate the required fields on the record that Unify is currently reading.

Unify groups company records that share the same domain, and when filtering audiences, Unify evaluates each linked record individually – if any linked record matches your criteria, the company will appear in the audience even if other linked records don't match.

• Open the company in Unify and check the Linked Records tab to see if multiple CRM records are linked under the same domain

• Verify the field values you're filtering on across all linked records – one of them likely contains the matching values

• If you've recently updated fields in your CRM, wait up to 30 minutes for the sync to complete before rechecking

HubSpot‑Specific Sync Limitations and Field Access

While the published article covers general sync timing, HubSpot has specific limitations that affect field availability in Unify's audience builder.

Unsupported HubSpot Field Types

• Multi‑select picklist properties

• Campaign properties

• HubSpot Lead‑object fields

Workaround for multi‑select properties: Create a single‑select version of the field in HubSpot and populate at least one record with a value. Allow approximately 30 minutes for the new field to sync.

HubSpot Two‑Cycle Linking Process

Beyond the initial sync completion, HubSpot requires a two‑cycle linking process (Unify → HubSpot, then HubSpot → Unify) that takes approximately 60 minutes before records appear as fully linked and fields become available in the audience builder.

Dropdown Options and Internal Names

If specific dropdown options don't appear for HubSpot fields, Unify uses the property's internal names rather than UI labels. Some options may not be exposed via API. You can work around this by entering the option's internal name directly in the Value field when filtering. See Property Options - Unify for details.

HubSpot Contact and Company Lifecycle Stage Limitation

Unify only supports reading deal lifecycle stages from HubSpot, not contact or company lifecycle stages. This means users attempting to filter by contact lifecycle stages (e.g., “Nurture,” “Opportunity,” etc.) will see zero results in the audience builder, even when records exist with those values in HubSpot.

Deal-Based Exclusions Operate at Company Level

Unify's native HubSpot deal-based exclusions work at the company level, meaning they affect all contacts at a company with matching deals, not just the specific contacts associated with those deals. If you need to exclude only the individual contacts tied to deals in certain stages (rather than everyone at the company), you cannot use company-level deal exclusions directly.

Workaround for contact-level deal exclusions:

1. Create a contact-level field in HubSpot (e.g., a checkbox or single-select field like "Has associated deal in stage X")

2. Use a HubSpot workflow or list membership to populate this field for contacts associated with deals in the target stages

3. Sync this field to Unify (allow approximately 30 minutes for sync)

4. Create a people-level exclusion in Unify using this contact field instead of a company-level exclusion

Workaround: Create a custom checkbox or single‑select field at the contact or company level in HubSpot to track the lifecycle stage information you need. Populate this field with the appropriate values, and it will sync to Unify where you can use it in the audience builder.