Duplicate Search Workflow
Use these steps to find duplicates saved in your database.
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 search process run. For more information, see Run the Duplicate Constituents Report. |
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Verify that the records identified as duplicates in the report 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 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 again. After that, run the Duplicate Constituents Report again and verify the constituents listed are duplicates.
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Run the merge process. After the merge process completes, run the full constituent search process again, and then run the Duplicate Constituents Report again. View the report and verify that the duplicate records have been merged. For more information about merges, see Merge Duplicate Constituents. |
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Continue to run search and merge processes until the database is "clean." After you run a full search, you can reduce the time required for subsequent searches by running the incremental process. The incremental duplicate search process takes less time because it compares only those records that were added or updated since the last search process was run. |
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Schedule full and incremental duplicate search processes to run automatically at regular intervals. This strategy, in conjunction with the automatic duplicate searches that run during data entry, will help maintain a clean database. For more information about how to schedule search processes, see Configure Duplicate Search Process Job Schedules. |
Note: The duplicates search processes and merge processes work in tandem. The groups of duplicates identified by searches provide the data sources for merge processes. For this reason, you should schedule the search and merge processes to run at similar intervals.