In the Organization context, within the Contact module, you can find the Duplicates control menu: Here you'll be able to search for potential duplicates identified by the system (Duplicate state* = Potential).
Among others, you can filter them by probability: You can safely merge any duplicate with a probability of being a duplicate over 80%.
If you click on the number of a line of potential duplicates (if you click elsewhere it's going to open their contact file), this screen will be displayed:
Here you can choose the information that you wish to keep after the merge or declare a "false positive" (aka. two contacts that are not real duplicates): The buttons "Merge" and "Flag false duplicates" are on the top of the screen.After the merge, the contact selected as "Top of duplicate" is the one that will remain active. Every element linked to the contact that will be merged will then be attached to the "Top of duplicate": sales, cultural, shipment, financial histories; contact connections of all types (structures, individuals, relays...).
Note on the deduplication of structures and relays:
- If the Duplicates detection batch has been set up to detect structure contact files, the button "Including structure contact" will appear in the Check for duplicates menu.
- You can merge structure and relays according to the same principle as individuals. However, it is important to take into consideration that relay duplicates are only identified when they are attached to the same structure.
- When two structures are merged, you will have to wait for the batch to be run again to be able to see the potential relay duplicates resulting from the merger of those structures.
Finally, sometimes you might be able to identify a duplicate that hasn't been detected by the batch. Here's what you can do:
- First, in the "Check for duplicates" menu, introduce any criteria to make a search: the button “New” will appear.
- Remark: eventhough no results will come up, go ahead to click "New" to manually find your duplicate contacts.
- Click on "New": A pop up screen will be displayed, and you'll be able to:
- Search for the "Top of the duplicate" (the one you wish to keep) and
- Search for the "Duplicate" (the one you want to merge).
- Click on the "Merge" button at the top of the screen.
To continue with this training unit, click here to learn about the contact file.