Ingress is a process that imports data from external source systems, masters the data, and stores it in MDM SaaS assets. When you get started with MDM SaaS for the first time, to onboard your initial data, you must ingress it. You can continue to ingress data incrementally to be in sync with the source systems.
For example, you work for an enterprise that manages customer data in Salesforce. You subscribe to MDM SaaS to master the customer data in Salesforce. To get started with MDM SaaS, ingress the initial data from Salesforce. You can then continue to ingress data incrementally into MDM SaaS so that the data in MDM SaaS is in sync with the Salesforce data.
You can import new records and update field values, delete field group entries in record sections, delete source records, or delete relationships and hierarchies. For example, you can import a new record, update only the home address, or delete the billing address of existing records.
Note:
You can't update patch records through ingress.
You can choose to update only the fields that contain values in the source system, without overwriting the entire record. The update applies only to the fields that are present in the source system and mapped to target fields. Other fields remain unchanged. You can control how the update handles empty fields in the source system. By default, the update ignores these values and leaves the corresponding target fields unchanged. You can choose to overwrite these target fields with null instead.
Note:
After migrating your rule associations to use Enrichment and Validation Orchestrator in organizations created before the October 2025 release, you can update only fields that contain values and set empty fields to null.
When you set empty fields to null, the update determines each field value using the following precedence:
•If the source system contains a value, the update sets the mapped field to that value.
•If the source system doesn't contain a value and the field has a default value, the update sets the mapped field to the default value.
•If the source system doesn't contain a value and the field has no default value, the update sets the mapped field to null.
Note:
When you update records through ingress, the NotReadyForMatch field remains unchanged, even when you overwrite empty fields.
You can also ingress records with validation errors. However, ensure that you purge the existing data before data validation is enabled and then ingress records that have validation errors.
You can use business IDs, which are unique identifiers that MDM SaaS uses to identify records, to ingress data. When the ingress data contains business IDs, the records merge directly with the master records, and they don't go through the match and merge process. For example, if you specify the business IDs of existing source records, the records merge with the master records to which the source records contribute. The records are added as source records and are assigned new business IDs. If you specify the business IDs of existing master records, the records become source records for the master records, and they merge directly with the master records. For more information about using business IDs to ingress data, see Ingress data with business ID.
You can exclude source records from participating in the match process by specifying them as not ready for match during the ingress process. You might want to exclude records that belong to a specific source system or records that contain incomplete data.