As you all know, organizations use customer relationship management applications to increase their productivity and efficiency. This is true as long as you can maintain the quality of data within the CRM. It is only when the information in CRM is correct, that you can use it for improving productivity and efficiency. As you all know, Business Organizations use CRM to increase their productivity and efficiency. This is true as long as you can maintain the quality of data within the CRM.
Wait……..! are you frustrated by seeing above two sentences being repeated? If yes, think of your sales reps who have to handle information within Salesforce. If there are duplicates then they sure, will surely get frustrated. This may not only lead to business loss and low adoption of CRM within the user community.
Well! As someone said “Prevention is better than cure”. Salesforce does provides Duplicate Management functionality to ensure accuracy of information. Let’s look at the these concepts in more details.
Salesforce Duplication Management
Duplicate Management can be setup by creating the following two rules.
- Matching Rule
- Duplicate Rule
Let’s take an example and see how above rules can be implemented in salesforce to prevent duplication.
Accounts in salesforce may have multiple contacts. The requirement is that same account should not have contact with the same details(i.e. Name, Email).
Matching Rule
Matching rules are the rules which define on what basis a record should be identified as a duplicate record. Now we will create a matching rule for contact object as per our above requirement.
Steps To Create Matching Rule
- Goto setup-> Administer-> Data Management-> Duplicate Management-> Matching Rules.
Click on “New Rule”. You will be redirected to the following page.
- Select an object from the dropdown list for which you want to create a matching rule. Here I’m selecting the contact object. Click on next button, you will be redirected to the following page.
- Enter the rule details like Name, Description. In the matching criteria, you have to tell the rule which fields to compare and how to compare.
- Field: Select the fields you want to compare.
- Matching Method: Matching methods are of two types ‘Exact’ and ‘Fuzzy’. If you select exact matching method it looks for strings that exactly match a pattern. If you select fuzzy matching method it looks for strings that approximately match a pattern.
- Match Blank Fields: If this check box is checked for any field and that field is blank on both the records, then it takes as matching criteria.
- Here I’ve selected four fields for matching criteria as shown in the above figure. You can also add filter logic in matching criteria. Click on save button, following screen will be shown.
- Click on Activate button to make it available for selecting in duplicate rule. Now we will create a duplicate rule for this matching rule.
Salesforce Duplicate Management
Duplicate rules are the rules which define what needs to be done when a duplicate record is found. Records can be either Blocked from creation or Allowed to save as a new record as per the rules defined.
Steps to Create Duplicate Rule
- Goto setup-> Administer-> Data Management-> Duplicate Management-> Duplicate Rules.
Click on “New Rule” by selecting the object for which you want to create a duplicate rule. Here I’m selecting the contact object. The Following screen will be shown.
- Enter the Name for duplicate rule.
- Select the Record-Level Security.
- Enforce Sharing rules: If this is selected, the matching rule compares with only records that the user has access to, and the resulting list of possible duplicates includes only records the user has access to.
- By-Pass Sharing rules: If this is selected, the matching rule compares all records, regardless of user access, but the resulting list of possible duplicates includes only records the user has access to.
- I’m selecting Action as Block when the record is created or updated.
- In the Matching rule section, select the matching rule which we have created above and click on the save You will be redirected to the following page.
- Click on Activate button to activate the duplicate rule.
With this, we have created a matching and duplicate rule for contact object. Now let’s try to create a duplicate contact for an account and see how it’s going to work. An Account named “Max” has already a contact with the name “John Peter” . I’m creating a new contact with same contact details as “John Peter”.
Hurray! Salesforce is not allowing to create duplicate contact. In the following screenshot, you will find the error message and possible duplicate record.
In this way, you can maintain data clean by preventing duplication within Salesforce.
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