Duplicate Check & Merge – Finalsite Enrollment

Overview

The Duplicate Check & Merge Tool can help you force merge any two contacts in your Finalsite Enrollment system who are not showing up under the Duplicate Contact Matching page. Please note: The Duplicate Check & Merge Tool allows you to check and merge one pair of contacts at a time. If you would like to bulk merge several strong or herculean match contacts, please check the Duplicate Contact Matching page.

This article will explain how to use the Duplicate Check & Merge Tool, as well as troubleshoot any issues that may come up when attempting to merge contacts.

To access this tool, navigate to 'Settings' - 'Fields & Data' - 'Duplicate Check and Merge' in your Finalsite Enrollment site.

How-To: Use the Duplicate Check & Merge Tool

In order to begin checking and merging your two duplicate records, you will need the Finalsite Enrollment ID for each contact. The best way to easily find this is to pull up the contact records for both of the duplicates, and check the URL of the page. The Finalsite Enrollment ID is the string of letters and numbers that follows 'contacts/'. For example:

In the First Record ID box on the Duplicate Check & Match page, input the Finalsite Enrollment ID of the contact record that you want to take precedence in the event of any conflicts. If there is any conflicting field data between the two records, the system will take the data from the contact placed in the First Record ID position.

Next, input the Finalsite Enrollment ID of the duplicate contact record in the Second Record ID box, then click the Dupe Check button to the right of the IDs. You will see a side-by-side comparison of some key information for the contacts, such as name, birth date, and contact information. Please be sure to double-check that you have the correct contacts to merge.

Once you have reviewed the information, click the red Merge button to complete the merge. Please note: Once records have been merged, the process is final and cannot be reversed.

How-To: Troubleshoot Common Issues

Contacts are failing to merge after clicking the Merge button

There are a few reasons that a merge can fail. Solution: Please try the following steps and if you are still having trouble, contact Support:

Billing Accounts: It's possible to merge parents that have Billing Accounts but it requires a few checks and steps. Please check out our Billing: How-to Merge or Delete Contacts with Billing Accounts article for in-depth info on the process.

ID Fields: If you have any auto-generating ID Fields in Finalsite Enrollment (e.g. IDs related to your SIS or integrations), it is possible that your two duplicate contacts have conflicting IDs. To resolve this, remove the ID from one of the contacts before attempting the merge again.

Switch Order: If your contacts are still not merging, you can try to switch the order of the First Record ID and the Second Record ID before merging again.

Dupe Check could not find one of the records entered

If you receive the message "Could not dupe match those two objects! Could not find [first or second] record" after entering the IDs and clicking on Dupe Check, this means that the system could not find either the first or second contact based on the ID you entered into the box.

Solution: Check that you have the correct IDs for both contacts and that both still exist in the system. You will also want to make sure that you don't have any additional characters in the Record ID boxes other than the ID itself. For example, entering any of the following formats will result in an error:

contacts/81f56326-14f4-11e9-86f2-bc764e10a9f7
81f56326-14f4-11e9-86f2-bc764e10a9f7/
http://yourschool.schooladminonline.com/contacts/81f56326-14f4-11e9-86f2-bc764e10a9f7

You will want to enter only the ID by itself. For example: 81f56326-14f4-11e9-86f2-bc764e10a9f7

Match Strength is coming up as Unknown or Weak

Certain items such as name and birthdate are weighted very heavily in the match strength calculation. If they are even slightly different between your two contacts, there is a good chance that the overall match strength will be lower than a strong/herculean match.

Solution: Carefully review the information to ensure that the two contacts are in fact duplicates, and not two separate contacts with similar names. Once you are certain they are in fact duplicates, you can feel free to merge the two.

The higher the match score, the more likely the contacts/households are a match. Refer to the match strength chart below:

0-124: unknown (very unlikely a match)
125-149: weak match
150-224: medium match
225-300: strong match (likely the contacts are a match)
301 and above: herculean match (extremely likely the contacts are a match)