Duplicate Management in Salesforce

Duplicate Records is a challenge faced by the Organisation. There are many ways to prevent Salesforce Duplicates including Standard( Salesforce Duplicate rules) and paid options(third party app like DemandTools, Duplicate Check). Duplicates in Salesforce can be managed by preventing duplicates and resolving the existing duplicates.

Prevention of Duplicates

Duplicates can be managed using Matching Rules and Duplicate rules, which will either alert or block the duplicates. Matching rules and duplicate rules work together to ensure that Users work with data that’s free of duplicates. Before Users save new and updated records, matching rules and duplicate rules provide warnings of potential duplicates. You manage matching rules and duplicate rules in Setup.

Matching rules can be set up for both Standard and Custom Objects. In matching rule, we define the criteria to match the records which help in identifying potential duplicates.

Steps to include fuzzy matching for the Account Name field.

1.     From Setup, select Matching Rules.

2.     Click New Rule.

3.     Select Account as an Object.

4.     Enter the Rule name, Account Matching Fuzzy Name field.

 5.     Add the matching criteria, Save and Activate the Matching rule.

Duplicate Rule

We can then choose to Block or Alert the Duplicate records with Fuzzy Account name.

Before an active matching rule can do anything, you pair it with a duplicate rule. You can include up to three matching rules in each duplicate rule, and up to five active matching rules per object.

1.     From Setup, select Duplicate Rules.

2.     Click New Rule and select Account

3.     Enter the Rule name and description.

4.     Block the creation of duplicates. Also blocks the Users from editing Accouns that result in duplicates.

5.     The new or updated Account with Accounts already in Salesforce using the custom matching rule created earlier is compared. Then save duplicate rule and activate it.

Now that the Matching and Duplicate rules are activated, when User tries to enter the fuzzy account name that already exists, it will block the User from saving an Account.

Merge Records to Resolve the existing Duplicates

1.     In the Related section of the Account object, click on the View Duplicates.

2.     To merge duplicates, choose up to 3 accounts. Then click Next and choose the fields to keep.

3.     Select Merge.