Question

Map Text field (many options/variations) to picklist field (limited options) in Salesforce

  • 11 May 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 169 views

Userlevel 1

Hey all,

I’m importing leads/contacts into our CRM Salesforce and they come with an assigned industry (~150 options for this industry field). Within Salesforce, I would like this industry field to be mapped to our internal industry definitions - which is a picklist field with only 10 options. 

F.e. If I import a contact that has “Banking” under Industry, I would like to have that mapped to our internal industry field and say “services”. I’m not sure where to start and how to get this done, any help is appreciated!


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1 reply

Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Severin, welcome to the Community! 👋

You could potentially use a Formatter (Utilities > Lookup Table) action for this. It would essentially allow you to have a list of the 150 industries (like “Banking”) and next to each have the relevant internal industry options that you’d like to them to be assigned to (like “Services”). See Create lookup tables in Zaps for more details.

One thing to note on this is that as you’re looking to select an item from a list of options, then you’ll need to make sure to use relevant ID number for the internal industry option in the lookup table, rather than it’s name. This is because in the Salesforce action, you’ll need to use the Custom value option in order to dynamically select the industry based on what’s output by the lookup table. And when using a custom value for dropdown (picklist) fields you’ll need to supply the option’s ID reference/number. You can read more about this here: Add custom values to dropdown menu fields in Zaps

That said, as there’s 150 industries it might be worth using a spreadsheet app like Google Sheets to store the lookup table in. That way you could copy and paste a list of those industries over more easily. Plus, you’d then be able to use the lookup table across multiple Zaps and manage the list in a single place. I wrote a guide on how to do this sort of thing a while back that explains the process on how to set that up: 


Hope that helps to point you in the right direction. Please do let us know how you get on!