Managing duplicate contacts

Standard

Contact Merge - Standard allows users to merge contacts on a contact-by-contact basis from individual user profile pages. With Contact Merge - Standard, you must already know which contacts you want to merge together.

Plus

Contact Merge - Plus locates all potential duplicate records and organizes them into duplicate pairs. You can manage these pairs to determine which records to retain, which records to merge into the retained records, and which records to mark as Not Duplicates. See Managing multiple duplicates for more information about Contact Merge - Plus.

The following items are important to consider when working with the Contact Merge feature:

• In the Other Memberships field, groups to which contacts belong are displayed. This includes Membership and Subscription groups as well as Chapters, Committees, Event registration rosters, and Relationships, and all event functions for which a contact is a member.
• In order to properly merge contacts that each have user-defined table data created in iMIS Desktop, the Always Create option must be enabled. If Always Create is disabled, the contact's data will not be merged.
• In the Custom Data field:
  • For single instance data sources, you can expand and compare data line-by-line, and any missing data in the retained record is populated when the data exists for the duplicate record.

  • For multi-instance sources, you only see the count of how many instances exist for each contact, and the entire record for each instance from the duplicate record is preserved in the retained record after the merge.

• When merged, any permissions that were attached to the Username of the discarded contact are given to the retained contact. The Username of the discarded contact is deleted, and that login will no longer work. If the retained contact does not have a user account, but the discarded contact does have a user account, then the discarded contact's Username will become the retained contact's Username after a merge.

Note: Currently, organizations cannot be merged.

To make sure that important data is not overwritten or otherwise lost, there are also several areas where information might not be merged:

• Events — If two people are registered for the same event, and neither person is cancelled, then their records will not be merged. Their records can be merged if one of the individuals cancels their registration.
• Groups — If two contacts are active members in the same Membership or Subscription group, for example, Dues, Chapter, Section, or Subscription:
  • If subscription records have overlapping dates, then:
    • If the subscription requires payment for membership, these contacts will not be merged.
    • If no payment is required for membership, then these contacts will be merged, and the membership is extended to the furthest date.
  • If subscription records do not have overlapping dates, then these contacts will be merged and the membership is extended to the furthest date.
  • If the number of subscription copies specified does not match, then these contacts are prevented from being merged.
• Certification — If two contacts are enrolled in Certification programs, and both contacts are or have ever been enrolled in the same Certification program, then the contacts cannot be merged, regardless of status.

To merge contacts directly from a profile page, do the following:

1. From the Staff site, go to the account page of an individual contact.
2. Under the profile picture, click Resolve Duplicates.
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The Resolve Duplicates window is displayed. The Master contact column displays pre-populated information for the contact.

3. Click Select a contact to merge to open a Merge contact window that allows you to select a record which you suspect may be a duplicate.

The queries you can access through this window are stored in the $/ContactManagement/DefaultSystem/Queries/Contacts folder. These queries can be modified by an Administrator if necessary. However, these queries are the same queries used by the On Behalf Of tool. Any modifications made to the queries for a merge will also be reflected in On Behalf Of.

4. (optional) If you are licensed for Contact Merge - Plus, select a contact from the Potential duplicates drop-down. The drop-down will not appear if you are not licensed, or if the Duplicate Search task did not find any potential duplicates:
   • From the drop-down, you can select a new contact to load into the second column.
   • The contacts in the drop-down will always be potential duplicates of the contact in the first column.
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5. Search for someone with the same name. If there is a duplicate contact, select that contact. The column for the duplicate contact will be populated with the duplicate contact’s information.
6. Select the Keep this contact radio button for the contact you want to retain. The information from the contact you are not keeping will be merged. If there is an empty field in the kept record, information from the other contact is used to fill the field.

Note: After a contact’s record has been merged, a user might see errors when attempting to log in with the merged user credentials. This problem is due to temporary caching. These errors will pass after a short timeframe, typically between five and ten minutes.

7. After you have reviewed the contacts' detailed information, click Merge. The ID number of the contact that was deleted is recorded. The change log also records data changes for any field for which changes are normally tracked.
8. While reviewing the contact information, if you decide that the contacts should not be merged and are not duplicates of each other, click Not Duplicates.

Note: The following information is considered a PLUS feature and additional licensing is required. For more information, contact your AiSP or ASI Technical Support.

iMIS Contact Merge - Plus locates all potential duplicate records and organizes them into duplicate pairs. You can manage these pairs to determine which records to retain, which records to merge into the retained records, and which records to mark as Not Duplicates.

Once your organization is licensed for Contact Merge - Plus, System Administrators, and users with a Customers-security level of 8 will have the ability to manage all potential duplicates of a contact from a single interface. To learn more about assigning security levels to specific users, see Module authorization levels. System Administrators also have the ability to enable a task that will search the database for potential duplicates on a specific date and time.

All records identified as potential duplicates will be paired together, and displayed in the Manage Duplicates window. An alert will display on each contact profile page when potential duplicate contact records exist. Only staff users will be able to see this alert. To learn more about automated alerts, please see Displaying automated alerts.

To search for and manage multiple duplicates

1. From the Staff site, go to Community > Manage duplicates.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. If you want to automatically search for potential duplicates at a later time, select Run task on a scheduled basis:
   1. From the Frequency drop-down, select how often you want your database to be searched for potential duplicate contacts.

   Note: Dates and times are based on the system Time zone setting.

   One time

   Select a Start date and time.

   Daily
   • Schedule - Select how often and at what time you want the task to run.
   • Start - Select the date and time you want to begin running daily searches.
   • End - Select the date you would like the daily searches to stop.
   Weekly
   • Schedule - Select how often and at what time you want the task to run.
   • Day of week - Select the days of the week you want the task to run.
   • Start - Select the date and time you want to begin running weekly searches.
   • End - Select the date and time you would like the weekly searches to stop.
   Monthly
   • Schedule - Select how often you want the task to run.
   • Day of month - Select the days of the month you want the task to run.
   • Start - Select the date and time you want the task to start running.
   • End - Select the date and time you want the task to stop running.

   Any time you create and save a new scheduled task, the previous task is overridden and will no longer run.

   2. Click Save.

   Note: Depending on how large of a database you have, the task could take several minutes to run. It is suggested you run the scheduled task at a time your system is not being heavily used. For example, on weekends or overnight.

4. (optional) Click Find Duplicates Now if you would like your system to immediately search for potential duplicate contacts. Depending on how large your database is, this could take several minutes. You can navigate around your site while the task runs.
5. When the task has finished running, click the Manage duplicates tab.
6. You can search for a specific possible duplicate, or you can scroll through the list.

Note: To ensure a quicker response, when the results return more than 100 potential duplicate contacts, not all of the pairs will display. In that case, if you search for a specific potential duplicate contact by ID or full name, it will always be found.

7. There are four columns in the Manage duplicates window:
   • Contact 1 - The potential duplicate of Contact 2. Select the contacts name to view more profile information.
   • Contact 2 - The potential duplicate of Contact 1. Select the contacts name to view more profile information.
   • Date Found - The date the potential duplicate was found.
   • Formula - The name of the rule that found the contacts as potential duplicates. The default formula (ASI) identifies two contacts as potential duplicates if the following are true:
     • The first four characters of their last names are the same
     • The first character of their first names are the same
     • Their zip code in the primary address is the same

     Note: Currently, this formula cannot be modified.

8. Select the arrow to expand the potential duplicate pair.
9. Both potential duplicate contacts in the pair contain information specific to that account:
   • Name
   • Primary Email
   • Primary Organization
   • Status
   • Date Created
   • Last Updated
   • Username

The contact information that appears is currently not customizable.

10. If the two contacts are determined not to be duplicates, select Not Duplicates. This will permanently mark them as not duplicates of each other.
11. Select Resolve to open the Merge Contacts window. From here you can view detailed information about the pair to help you determine if you should merge the contacts, or mark them as Not Duplicates.
12. After you review the detailed contact information, select a contact to keep, then click Merge.

Note: Once the contacts have been merged, they will no longer be shown in the table.

13. After reviewing the contacts' detailed information, if you decide the contacts should no longer be merged and are not duplicates of each other, click Not Duplicates.

If you would like to export the Manage duplicates table, select the desired export icon. Select Expand All to expand all of the nodes in each potential duplicate pair.

If you are experiencing a problem with existing members or users (who already have usernames or accounts) creating new accounts instead of signing in with their existing accounts, the following tips might help cut down on the number of duplicate accounts being created:

• Consider adding user instructions on your Event Showcase regarding signing in versus creating a new account. Add a Content Html content item just above or just below the existing Contact Sign In content item. Emphasize that existing members should sign in with their account or use the Forgot my password or Forgot my username links, rather than creating a new account. You can even provide readily-accessible contact information or links so that users can receive assistance from staff if they are still having trouble signing in with their existing account.

Note: If you are using the default Event page, you will need to make a copy of it in order to add the Content Html content item, and then edit your EventDetail shortcut to point to your new copy of the page.

• You could add notes inside your event description area. For example, add a note explaining that users must sign in first, and to use their existing account.
• You could configure the existing Contact Sign In content item on that page, and change the text for the Create account link text, for example, you could enter Create a new account only if you do not have an existing account.

Note: If you are using the default Event page, you will need to make a copy of it in order to add the Content Html content item, and then edit your EventDetail shortcut to point to your new copy of the page.

• You could add another warning or set of instructions at the top of the Create Account page with the Content Html content item. Emphasize that it is very important that users log in with their existing account, rather than creating a new account. Using the Content Html content item, you can put your note in bold, use a color, and so forth.

Note: If you are using the default Event page, you will need to make a copy of it in order to add the Content Html content item, and then edit your EventDetail shortcut to point to your new copy of the page.

Adding one or more of these things to your site should help to mitigate the risk of duplicate account creation.