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In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, duplicate detection helps ensure accurate data by identifying and even preventing identical or similar records.
Clean, reliable data in your CRM system makes it easier for your implementation to succeed.
As a system administrator, you must perform three one-time setup tasks before CRM can check for duplicates.
First, set CRM to check for duplicates automatically. CRM can check for duplicates when someone creates a new record or updates an existing record, a user goes from offline to online after using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, or someone imports data into CRM from an external source, such as Excel.
After you decide when CRM should check for duplicates, the second task is to set up duplicate-detection rules.
Duplicate-detection rules define the patterns that CRM uses to match similar or identical records.
For example, contacts that have exactly the same e-mail address.
Each rule applies to a single entity or a pair of entities such as the Account and Contact entities, which are similar to each other because they both represent customers.
CRM includes simple duplicate-detection rules that you can use as examples to create rules that meet your organization’s needs.
To create a duplicate-detection rule, choose which fields CRM should use to identify possible matches.
Like customizations and workflows, duplicate-detection rules must be published before they can be used.
The third and final task is to set duplicate-detection rules to run automatically at regular intervals. This task is optional, but recommended.
For large amounts of data, duplicate detection can take some time.
To ensure you’re not blocked from doing other things in CRM, duplicate detection runs in the background.
You can choose to receive e-mail notifications when a duplicate-detection job is complete.
As users enter data, CRM automatically checks for duplicates based on the criteria defined by the duplicate-detection rules.
When CRM finds a potential duplicate, the user is prompted to decide what they want to do with it.
If duplicate-detection rules are defined for an entity, anyone can start a duplicate-detection job manually.
Because even duplicate data may have some value, CRM never automatically deletes any records from your system. You or your users choose what to do with potential duplicates.
Duplicate detection is an important tool in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to ensure your customer information is reliable.
Having accurate data will help your organization’s marketing, sales, and customer service teams be as effective as they can be.
