What is the Anti-Duplicate feature?
The Duplicate Prevention feature allows account administrators to buy phone number list select up to three unique fields per module in which the system will automatically check newly created records for duplicate values. If the values of the selected fields match an existing record, the system will not allow the user to create a new record.
Where can users find the anti-duplicate feature?
Account administrators can access the Anti-Duplicate feature by going to Settings → Manage Modules → Module Layouts & Fields.
Preventing Duplication of Large Small Items (Image 1, Settings Page)
Once users click on the module layouts and fields, they will be prompted to select the module they would like to work with (Contacts, Deals, Accounts, etc.).
Preventing Duplication of Large Small Items (Image 2, Select Module)
Once the desired module is selected, users can click on the Prevent Duplication tab to begin modifying and customizing this feature to ensure that new duplicate records are not created in the CRM.
Preventing Duplication of Large Small Items (Image 3, Prevent Duplication tab)
How to use duplicate prevention
Once you have selected the "Duplicate Prevention" tab, first make sure that the "Enable Duplicate Checking" button is enabled.
Preventing duplication of large small items (image 4, toggle button)
From there, users will be presented with various options to ensure that they are using Duplicate Prevention to meet their needs. Let’s break down these options one by one and dive deeper into this feature:
Select unique fields
The first step is to select up to three unique fields to check records against. Unique fields are any existing fields whose values belong to only one record in the CRM (including custom fields created by the account administrator). For example, if users are setting up the Anti-Duplicate feature in the Contacts module, they would not want to select the First Name or Last Name fields to be checked by the Anti-Duplicate feature. First and last names are frequently used by many people and are not unique identifying fields.
Some examples of fields that you should use to prevent duplication in the Contacts module are the Primary Email and Phone fields. The values in these fields will be unique to the contact that contains them, and are great fields for the duplication prevention system to check.
Preventing Duplication of Large Minorities (Image 5, Unique Fields)
Reconsideration
The user must then determine what considerations the system takes into account to determine that newly created records are not duplicates. At this point, one of two options can be selected, as detailed below:
Consider as duplicate only if all unique fields match – The system will check all unique fields selected in the first step and prevent the record from being created only if all field values match the values in the existing record.
Consider as duplicate if at least one of the unique fields matches – the system will check all the unique fields selected in the first step, and if any of the field values match the values in an existing record, the system will prevent the creation of a new record.
Preventing Duplication of Large Small Items (Figure 6, Reviewing Duplicates)
Check closed records for duplicates and ignore empty values
The following two flags allow users to further enhance duplicate protection:
Check Closed Records for Duplicates Command This option, if enabled, will cause the system to search all records in the system, including closed records, for matching field values to prevent duplicate records from being created.
Ignore Blank Values Command The option, if enabled, will ignore blank field values when the system checks the selected unique fields. This means that it will allow the system to create new records if the corresponding blank (empty) fields match in the CRM. For example, if users use the Primary Email field in the Contacts module to prevent duplication and the Ignore Blank Values checkbox is checked, the system will still allow new records to be created even if the unique fields technically match because they are blank.
Preventing duplication of large details (image 7, checkbox closed, ignore spaces)
Action options for duplicate records created during synchronization
The final option that users can use when setting up duplicate prevention is the “Action to take when a duplicate record is detected when synchronizing with external applications.” This is an important step in the duplicate prevention process, as it is where users can tell the system how to handle duplicate records detected during synchronization with an external application. There are three options to choose from at this point, as detailed below:
Prefer Last Entry – The most recently modified entry data will be kept
Prefer Internal Record – The existing record in the CRM will be kept as is
Prefer External Recording – Data from an external application will be copied