Why is CRM Contact data unavailable on Child BUs in Marketing Cloud?

Question

We have a Marketing Cloud instance with multiple BUs.

The Parent BU is connected to Sales Cloud with MC Connect.

On the Parent BU we use automations to filter and share contacts with the child BUs. Those are available for further marketing activities on the child BUs.

The issue we are facing is that in Journey Builder in the Child BU, the Contact Data from Salesforce CRM doesn't show so we can't evaluate Journey Goals vs. what happened in the CRM in child BUs.

The Attribute Group for the CRM doesn't show under Contact builder in the Child BUs - which is the same issue I guess.

Is there a setting we are missing?

Appreciate your insights!

Update: In the Parent BU - under Synchronized Data Sources > OUR_SALESFORCE_ORG > Sharing Tab tried "Sharing Across Entreprise" option.

This makes the Synced DEs available in the child BUs (which is not necessarily desired), but still no Attribute Group in the child BUs in Contact Builder.

PS

Multi-org is off.

Answer 1

Got a the following reply from support:

I would like to inform you that the contact model will be visible only in the enterprise account. In the child BU, it will not be visible. If you would like to use the goal or exit criteria you need to create the contact model in the child BU by creating the data extension.

Else we can enable the multi-org for the account and then the contact model will be visible in all the enterprise and child BU's.

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_co_faqs_for_multi_org.htm&type=5

For anyone reading this, before you go the multi-org route (which is irreversible) do your research, from the research I have done - it is not recommended to have two MC-Connects to the same Production Org.

So the way to go would be to filter the Synced DEs to the Child BUs, run an automation to update these periodically, then map them to your Contact model in the Child BU so they're accessible in JB.

Two downsides for this approach:

1. The sync would be hourly best
2. You are limited (depends on your license, although this is not actively enforced) as to how many automations can run yearly. With ~5 hourly automations you'd typically hit that limit. Even if the limit isn't currently enforced, it tells you something about the load that the system is designed to handle.