Keeping your data clean within CRM can be large responsibility. Scheduling duplicate detection in Dynamics CRM 2011 can help keep our data clean with minimal effort.

First, navigate to Duplicate Detection Jobs of Data Management in the Settings module.

The Welcome to the Duplicate Detection Wizard window will appear. This gives us an idea of what to expect. Click next.

The next window to appear is used to choose the set of records affected by the duplicate detection job. A duplicate detection job can be run on accounts, contacts or leads. This screen functions the same as Advanced Find. In this example, duplicate detection will be run on accounts in the system that have "sample" in the name. After defining the search criteria, the Preview Records button can be used to ensure the search is including all the records we intend it to.

Click Next, once the search is defined. The following screen is the scheduling of the duplicate detection job.

The Name field is what this job will appear as in the system jobs. The date and time entered in the Start Time field is the first time this job will run. Checking the box below Start Time opens the option to schedule the job to run automatically at different intervals. The job will automatically run the number of days chosen from the first time it ran. E-mail options is a nice feature that will send the user and other users in the system e-mail notification when the job runs. This allows us to schedule a job and forget about it until we receive an email to tell us it happened. After setting the schedule, e-mail notification and name, click Next.

The following screen is just an information screen to let us know where to find our duplicate detection job. Click Submit.

We can monitor our duplicate detection job from the Duplicate Detection in the Workplace module. Once the job has a Status Reason of Succeeded, click the job to see the results. Click View Duplicates on the information screen that appears.

If no duplicates were found, then we are doing a great job of adding information to the system. In the event a duplicate is found, we are able to merge the records from this screen.

Check the box next to the records that should be merged and click Merge. A dropdown list will appear and give the option to do this automatically or select the master. Selecting the master allows us to choose which information to keep from the two records. After each duplicate is tended to, we can close the window and get back to entering data. Since the job was scheduled to run every 30 days, an email will be sent to remind us to check the job.

Happy CRM'ing!