Duplicate Constituent Workflow
The system provides tools you can use to identify and merge duplicate constituent records. To help you understand the steps and typical processes you will run through, we provide the following checklist.
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To prevent duplicates in the database, turn on the Constituent Matching Settings in Administration. For more information, see Prevent Duplicate Constituents. |
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Run a duplicate search process to identify constituent records that may be duplicates based on scoring parameters you configure. You can use the Full duplicate search and Incremental duplicate search tasks provided on the Duplicates page. For more information, see Find Duplicate Constituents. |
Warning: The duplicate search process can take an extended period of time to run depending on the number of records in your database and the configuration options you select for the process.
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Run the Duplicate Constituents Report to view a list of constituent records identified as potential duplicates by the search process. When you run the report, you select whether to view it for the last full or incremental process run. For more information, see Run the Duplicate Constituents Report. |
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View the Duplicate Constituents Report and verify that the records identified as duplicates are indeed duplicates that should be merged. If records are found that are not duplicates, take appropriate steps to correct or clarify information on their constituent records. For example, if relationships have not been configured for family members with the same last name and address, they may be identified as duplicates. To correct this, access their constituent records and add the appropriate relationships. After the relationships are added, they will no longer be identified as duplicates. For more information, see Run the Duplicate Constituents Report. |
Note: If you make changes to constituent records after viewing the Duplicate Constituents Report, you should run the duplicate search process again. After that, run the Duplicate Constituents Report again and verify the constituents listed are duplicates.
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Add a merge configuration or verify that the default merge configuration provided with the system will meet your needs. The merge configuration determines the information to merge from the source record to the target record. For more information, see Manage Constituent Merge Configurations. |
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Add a merge process. This process will merge records identified as duplicate constituents based on the merge configuration you select. For more information, see Add Constituent Merge Processes. |
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Preview the merge process. Before you run the merge, from the process record, select the Preview Merge tab. On this tab, review the source and target records that will be merged. If you notice records that should not be merged, select them and click Do not merge. For more information, see Preview Constituents to Merge. |
Warning: The duplicate merge process can take an extended period of time to run depending on the number of records being merged.
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Confirm that the duplicates have been merged. After the merge process completes, run the constituent search process again, then run the Duplicate Constituents Report again. View the report and verify that the duplicate records have been merged. Some duplicates may not have been merged due to settings on the merge configuration. In this case, you can access the Preview Merge tab again on the process record and manually merge these. |