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Duplicate Detection in CRM: Clean Data is Happy Data

Post Author: Joe D365 |

Duplicate detection is sometimes neglected in the day-to-day management of CRM, but it plays a huge role in data quality and should definitely not be overlooked. In today's blog, we will breakdown how the duplication detection view works and we'll go over how to modify your duplication detection results. Let's begin!

UNDERSTANDING THE DUPLICATE DETECTION VIEW

Have you ever run a duplicate detection job and wished you could change the view columns to help when you're comparing potential duplicates? The good news is you can! But it's not as straightforward as changing other views in the system. The key is to understand how the duplicate detection view is put together. It's actually a combination of three different pieces.

Piece 1: The Static Part


The first part of the view is composed of three columns that never change: the Name column, the Status column, and the Modified On column.

Piece 2: The Rules Part


The next section is pulled from your duplicate detection rules. In the case above, there are rules looking for matches on Lead email addresses, mobile phone numbers, and business phone numbers. These columns are inserted into the view after the three static columns.

Piece 3: The Dynamic Part


The last columns are all pulled from the entity's lookup view. The system compares what columns are in the duplicate detection view already from pieces 1 and 2 to the columns in the entity's lookup view and fills in the columns that are missing. This doesn't include columns that are being pulled in from related entities. This is where you can customize the columns you see in the duplicate detection view. Simply edit the entity's lookup view with the columns you feel will be relevant in your duplicate comparison, publish, and then return to your duplicate detection job to see the new columns added to the view!

MODIFYING DUPLICATE DETECTION RESULTS

We posted earlier on the topic of detecting duplicates in CRM in our blog titled Scheduling Duplicate Detection. Here's a quick tip on how to make this wizard work a little harder for you.

After you've run a duplicate detection job and you're viewing the results, you may decide there isn't enough information displayed to quickly decide whether a record is a true duplicate. You may think you have to open every record to view and compare the information you need. However, you can breathe a sigh of relief because that isn't necessary! By customizing the lookup view for the entity you're de-duping, you can change which columns are displayed in the results window.

Say you're de-duping Contacts, and you want to see the City, State, and Date of Birth of each Contact to help you decide whether the record is a duplicate or not. In order to do this, you need to customize the Contacts Lookup View.


After publishing the view, open up the duplicate detection job. You will see that the columns have changed, and that these records are not duplicates after all!


Check out The CRM Book for more information on managing duplicate detection settings and rules.

Happy CRM'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

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