AutoMerge User Guide

Learn how to AutoMerge data within your Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM!

"AutoMerge Contacts" Dashboard View

The “AutoMerge Contacts” view in your dashboard shows the following high level stats:

How many duplicates you have and how they were found (MatchType)
How large your duplicate sets are (# records per set)
Who has been creating the duplicate records
What precision numbers your duplicate sets fall into from 0 (loosely matched) to 100 (closely matched), according to your customizable precision rules

"AM Contact Dupes" List Views

The “AM Contacts Dupes” views groups your duplicate records and gives each grouping/set a rank. Each set will have 2 or more records, all of which can be AutoMerged with a single mouse click.

The AM Contact Dupes(^) view sorts your data where the high precision sets are shown at the top. The AM Contact Dupes(v) view sorts your data where the low precision sets are shown at the top.

To see either of these views, go to your Contacts and open the “AM Contacts Dupes (^)” or the “AM Contacts Dupes (v)” view.

The 1st column is the Rank. The record with a Rank of 1 is the winner-designate and will remain active, but will disappear from this list view of duplicates after you AutoMerge the set.

The 2nd column is the Precision. After the analysis finds the duplicate sets, it compares a configurable set of fields across all records of the set to determine a Precision %. The Precision % can range from 0 (loosely matched) to 100 (closely matched.)

The 3rd column is Match Type. This column tells you how we first found the match. Note that the records of a duplicate set may match in several ways, but this field only tells you one of them (the first match rule that applied.)

These views may not have all the fields you wish to compare, so feel free to make a copy of our default view either as a System View (requires System Administrator privileges) or an Advanced Find.

Modifying "AM Contact Dupes" Views to Your Needs

First, make a copy of one of the “AM Contact Dupes” views and add your own columns to help you validate the duplicate sets and if the sets are sorted properly.

While on the “AM Contact Dupes” view:

Click the Advanced Find button () at the upper right.
In the new window, switch the “Use Saved View:” to “AM Contact Dupes.”
Click “Edit Columns” button and add columns as necessary. Click “OK” to close the “Add Columns” dialog.
Click “OK” to close the “Edit Columns” dialog.
Finally, click the “Save As” button and give your new personal view a name.
Go back to your main window and click refresh (F5) to see your new personal view in the list.

Warning: Be careful not to change the Filters or the Sorting of any Duplicates ViewChanging the filters and/or sorting behavior will cause duplicate sets to not be grouped together. You don’t want to AutoMerge a set of duplicates when one or more of the records aren’t shown with the others.

Viewing/Editing Potential Duplicates Before AutoMerging (now with a Field Chooser)

Using the “AM Contact Dupes” list views above are a great way to quickly validate and AutoMerge a lot of duplicate sets at once, but doing that is a usually performed as a one-off activity by users who don’t necessarily own those records. Instead, you may want to flag potential duplicates to your end users in the course of their daily work flow. This is where the “Potential Duplicates” web resource can help.

The main advantage of seeing potential duplicates in the form is that your end-users (the actual owners of the records) can be prompted to AutoMerge them as they discover them as opposed to having an IT/Analyst type person deal with them en masse from the list view (which is not politically feasible in many organizations)

Click here to learn how to customize the Potential Duplicates Subgrid/WebResource to your needs.

AutoMerging Duplicates

Now you can select records from multiple sets and AutoMerge them all at once.

Even though the animation shows selecting the Rank #1 records from the three duplicate sets, you may select any (or all) records from any (or all) sets on the page and AutoMerge all sets with a single click. The behavior is the same no matter what records you’ve selected from each duplicate set. The record with a Rank of 1 is the winner-designate and will remain active, but will disappear from this list view of duplicates after you AutoMerge the set.

AutoMerge Set Primary

If you want to change the winner of a particular duplicate set, simply select that record (Rank>=2) and click the AutoMerge Set Primary button. That record will move to the #1 position and the other records will shift down in order.

AutoMerge Ignore

If you want to remove record(s) from their set(s), select the record(s) and click the AutoMerge Ignore button. The selected records will be removed from the view and be ignored from future analyses. If you ignore all but one record from a duplicate set, the remaining record will indeed be included in future analyses, but it nonetheless disappear from the view because it no longer has other matched records associated with it.

NOTE: Ignored records can be UN-Ignored at any time with a Bulk Edit or by submitting an “Unignore All” request in the AutoMerge Managment App.

Now that you understand how matching and ranking are being performed via your requirements, you can start to AutoMerge large numbers of duplicates quickly. Once ready, select the whole page of duplicate sets and click the AutoMerge button. Be prepared to wait several seconds for the synchronous process to complete.

Complex Field Preservation

What happens when you want to preserve a Loser record (e.g emailaddress1) into a Winner’s field (e.g emailaddress2) if both records had that specific field populated (e.g emailaddress1) with different values AND the secondary Winner field (e.g emailaddress2) isn’t populated? That’s where complex field preservation can help you.

Viewing AutoMerged History

In Contacts View

To view the deactivated AutoMerged records, switch over to the “AM Contact History (Losers)” View. In the highlighted column, you have links to the remaining active winner records.

In Active Winner Record

In the winner record, you can see the AutoMerged Contacts subgrid and the loser record for historical reference (until you decide to recover the space by bulk deleting the inactive Contacts in your CRM.) By default, all fields not populated on the winner will be pulled from the first loser, according to increasing rank.

We added the AutoMerged Contacts subgrid to the OOB form for our demo. You won’t see it on your OOB Contact form after importing our managed solution. Someone with customization privileges will have to add it to the form you are using.