Managing Duplicate Matching & Merging

Overview

Teams working within Practifi regularly encounter a common question found in many data management tools: how should they mitigate and manage duplicate contacts and entities? To allow firms to manage their data more effectively, Practifi offers Duplicate Matching and Merging features. Keep in mind that once these settings are built, teams likely will not need to revisit unless any new rules are necessary for the future.

• Activating Matching Rules
• Customizing Matching Rules
• Setting Duplicate Rules
• Editing Pages
• Duplicate Matching Workflow
• Merging Records

Activating Matching Rules

To begin building the necessary settings to highlight duplicates within the system, navigate to the Salesforce Setup page by clicking the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page (represented by) and selecting Setup. Next, using the Quick Find search bar, you will enter Matching Rules and select the option provided. This will open the Matching Rules page, where we will be able to activate the following Matching Rules:

1. Standard Account Matching Rule
2. Standard Contact Matching Rule
3. Standard Person Account Matching Rule (specifically for Individuals)

Customizing Matching Rules

Occasionally, teams may determine that they need more than the standard matching rules to ensure that the records are not only closely related. Teams must decide whether to use the available rules or build a new rule since edits to available rules are not allowed.

To add a new rule, you will select the New Rule button. You will then need to apply the matching rule to the relevant Object where you would like to compare records. Now, enter a name and description for the rule. If you’re working towards complying with various data protection and privacy regulations, consider excluding personal data from those fields.

Next, we’ll need to enter the matching criteria, defining which fields to compare and how we’d like that comparison to work.

Please note: The matching methods will fall under two categories, exact or fuzzy.

• The exact matching method looks for strings that exactly match a pattern. If you’re using precise data, we recommend using the exact matching method with your matching rules. You can use the exact matching method for almost any field, including custom fields.
• The fuzzy matching methods look for strings that approximately match a pattern. Specific fuzzy matching methods are available for commonly used standard fields on accounts and contacts. 

You can add fields (up to 10 total) or adjust the matching equation (for example, to change an AND expression to an OR expression) and add more specific filter logic.

Once you’ve built the various criteria for your new rule, click the Save button and activate the rule. The activation process can take some time. You’re notified by email when your matching rule is ready to use. Once a matching rule is active, you can use it with duplicate rules and duplicate jobs.

Setting Duplicate Rules

Now you’ll return to the Quick Find search bar and enter Duplicate Rules, and select the option provided. This will open the Duplicate Rules page, where we will be able to edit and create new rules that will allow us to determine how we notify users of duplicates within the system.

You will begin by first activating the following Duplicate Rules:

1. Standard Person Account Duplicate Rule
2. Standard Rule for Contacts with Duplicate Leads
   
   Please note: Before we can activate Standard Rule for Contacts with Duplicate Leads, administrators must first edit the “Compare Contacts With” field to change from Leads to Contacts and select the Save button.
   
   

To activate the Duplicate Rule, select the hyperlinked name of the rule you would like to choose, and once on the specific record page, click the Activate button.

Once both rules have been activated, the administrator will need to add one new rule by selecting the New Rule button. Once clicked, the button will open a drop-down menu that allows us to choose the Account option and opens a new Duplicate Rules page. You will then set the name as Standard Account Duplicate Rule, select the checkbox for Report in the Action On Edit section and confirm that the “Compare Entities With” field is set to Account before finally clicking the Save button.

Once saved, you’ll want to follow the steps above to activate this new Duplicate Rule.

Editing Contact Layout Pages

Once the relevant rules have been set up, we will need to ensure that our contact and account page layouts include the Potential Duplicate component. To do this, we will first navigate to a contact record, click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page (represented by), and then select Edit Page.

The Lightning App Builder for the page will load, and we will use the Search bar to enter the text “Potential Duplicates.” Our selection will populate in the Standard components section, where we will click and drag the option into the bottom of the page layout in the middle section of the page.

The next step will be to select our new Potential Duplicates component and review the Display Options menu that appears on the right-hand menu. We will choose the Show Toast option to allow the proper notification to display when a duplicate is found. Now that we’ve added our new component and selected our specific notification type, we will choose the Save button. This will open a new child window which will ask to activate our updated page layout. We will select the Activate button to move forward.

A second child window will populate and assign our new page layout across other records within Practifi. Since we are currently working on Contacts specifically, we can select the Assign As Org Default button to set the standards we’d expect to see throughout the tool.

Then click the form factor choice Desktop and phone, select the Next button, and click the Save button after reviewing your assignment choices. Once the page layout changes are saved, select the back button in the upper-left corner of the page.

Editing Account Layout Pages

The Contact changes have now been completed, but we will need to do the same for Accounts (also called Entities). After navigating to a household or organization record, click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page (represented by), and then select Edit Page.

The Lightning App Builder for the page will load, and we will use the Search bar to enter the text “Potential Duplicates.” Our selection will populate in the Standard components section, where we will click and drag the option into the bottom of the page layout in the middle section of the page. The next step will be to select our new Potential Duplicates component and review the Display Options menu that appears on the right-hand menu. We will choose the Show Toast option to allow the proper notification to display when a duplicate is found. Now that we’ve added our new component and selected our specific notification type, we will choose the Save button.

This will open a new child window which will ask to activate our updated page layout. We will select the Activate button to move forward.

A second child window will populate and assign our new page layout across other records within Practifi. However, this time, we will click into the third provided tab, called “App, Record Type, and Profile,” before selecting the Add to Apps, Record Types, and Profiles button.

This will allow us to choose the apps where we would like to make duplicate matching available. We recommend selecting the following:

• Advisor
• Client Service
• Management
• Compliance
• Marketing
• Team Member
• Data Management

Once your checkboxes have been selected, click Next. This will bring us to a confirmation window where we will choose Next a second time.

A new child window will appear that allows us to choose the types of Entities that our choices will affect. For our example, we will focus on checking the box for those related to Clients:

• Household Client
• Individual Client
• Organization Client

Once selected, we will click the Next button. This will lead us to the Selected Profiles menu, where we will choose the following options:

• Practifi User - Salesforce
• Practifi User - Salesforce Platform
• System Administrator

Please note: If you would like Administrators alone to have the ability to review and merge duplicates, then skip the first two profiles types and only select System Administrator.

Once you’ve chosen the profiles, select the Next button and click the Save button after reviewing your assignment choices. Once the page layout changes are saved, select the back button in the upper-left corner of the page.

Duplicate Matching Workflow

Now that all our settings have been built, we can begin to catch duplicates on entry into Practifi or once we attempt to edit a record that appears to have a duplicate elsewhere in the system.

When a user now attempts to create a Contact or Entity that already has an existing record, they will receive the following error message: “This error occurred when the flow tried to create records: DUPLICATES_DETECTED.”

The user will then be guided to the Back button to update the record if the duplicate information was entered by mistake or use Next to accept the error and close the new record window without creating an additional Contact or Entity record. 

When a duplicate is found for two or more records in the organization, we will receive the following toast message: “It looks as if duplicates exist for this Entity/Contact. View Duplicates”.

Clicking the View Duplicates hyperlink will allow us to find all relevant duplicate records currently entered into Practifi to determine if we should begin to merge them.

Merging Records

Once we have found a duplicate match, we can fix the problem by merging or combining the records in question. After selecting the View Duplicates hyperlink, the Potential Duplicate Records child window opens and allows the user to review the records that have been flagged. If the records are deemed appropriate for merging, we can select up to three records and then select Next.

The user will then be asked to determine which Contact or Entity record contains the most relevant information for the main fields for that record type and allow us to choose the correct radio button field-by-field and maintain one of the duplicate records as the Master Record or original. Once we’ve confirmed all the selections are correct, select Next to approve the merge.

Once the merging is complete, you will now have one record where there used to be 2 or 3. If we happen to have more than three duplicates to begin with, we’ll need to repeat this process until we have only one.