Thankfully, Salesforce has an out of the box feature to identify, alert and handle duplicate records. This is called “Duplicate Management”. The concept of duplicate management is fairly simple.
- Firstly, define a set of rules for identifying records as duplicate. This is called “Matching Rule“. You can use Salesforce out of the box rules (available on lead, account & contact) or create your own rules.
- And secondly, define the rules on what should happen if the record is identified as a duplicate based on the matching rule. This is called “Duplicate Rule“. In this, you can choose to just warn the user and still allow them to create/edit the record or you can choose to block the user from creating /editing the record.
While the above rules will help you identify the duplicate records at the time of adding/editing the record in real-time, you can use the following to report on the existing duplicates in the system
- Duplicate Record Sets
- Using Custom Report Types
- Running Duplicate Jobs (available only in Performance & Unlimited Editions)
Ok, that’s enough talk. Now let’s see this in action with this step-by-step guide
References
- Trailhead Module – Duplicate Management (45 minutes) – https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/sales_admin_duplicate_management
- Manage Duplicate Records (10 minutes) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=managing_duplicates_overview.htm&type=5
- Manage Duplicates One at a Time (10 minutes) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=manage_individual_duplicate_records.htm&type=5
- Manage Duplicates Globally (5 minutes) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=manage_duplicates_globally.htm&type=5
- Customize Duplicate Management (5 minutes) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=duplicate_prevention_map_of_tasks.htm&type=5
Video URLs
- Take Control of Duplicates—Use Duplicate Rules and the Potential Duplicates Component (3:14 minutes) – https://youtu.be/r2j5mwekX1s
- Use Matching Rules to Hunt Down Duplicate Records (3:28 minutes) – https://youtu.be/zy0u5fKBft0