Overview
Managing duplicates is a critical part of maintaining a useful database. Powerbase offers a number of complex methods to properly avoid duplicates and merge ones that are created.
Objectives
All participants should finish this lesson understanding what a de-dupe rule is, how to create one and the workflow for finding and merging duplicates.
Requirements
Good math skills.
Description
The lesson should take about 45 minutes. All students should be using the training database for this lesson.
Discuss
Q: How do you know if two records in your database are the same person?
A: First name, last name and email is our recommended answer, but...
Q: What if you are importing records without an email address (sign in sheet or from another source).
A: First name, last name and email OR phone. Different situations call for different.
Balancing act between allowing duplicate records and avoiding improper merges.
FUN FACT: When you allow people to register for an event or make a contribution, you are inviting complete strangers to edit your database.
Explain steps:
- Define rules
- Configure Powerbase touse rules
- Find duplicates
- Merge duplicates
Demonstrate
First Step: define rules
- Display Find and Merge screen
- Difference between individual and organization
- Difference between supervised and unsupervised
- Add new rule and explain weights and thresholds
- Don't use length unless absolutely necessary!
Second Step: configure Powerbase to use rules
Show event page where you can specify which rule to use.
Third step: Find duplicates
Back to Contacts → Find and Merge duplicates
Explain batch process
Fourth Step: Merge
Also show merge contacts option in search results.