All Salesforce admins struggle with duplicate records. Every Salesforce org I’ve ever worked with had duplicates, even the ones that claimed me there weren’t any. People’s misconception exacerbates the issue that Salesforce automatically manages and blocks duplicates. That’s untrue, and the difficulty comes from the fact that “duplicate” is defined differently by each business.
In Salesforce, the struggle against duplicate records is fought on two fronts: prevention and cure. First, avoid salesforce duplication in both free and paid (standard and paid alternatives are available). However, if it is too late to implement these crucial safeguards, there are still ways to remove duplicate records.
Matching Rules | Duplicate Rules |
| ‘What field’ and ‘how’ to match will be specified. For instance, “Account Name, Fuzzy Match” or “Email Field, Exact Match.” Matching rules by themselves have no effect. However, this can be compared to the recipe without a chef. | Will manage “where” and “when” to find duplicates using those Matching Rules. For instance, “Use Account Name, Fuzzy Match” to discover duplicates when creating an Account object or “Use Email, Exact Match” to find duplicates while creating and editing Leads and Contacts Compared to a chef following a recipe (i.e., the matching rule). |
Two consequences may result from duplicate rules:
- Warn the user who is generating a duplicate
- Keep duplicate records from being created
Salesforce Standard Duplicate Rules
Salesforce has three default matching rules for accounts, contacts, and leads. These are insufficient on their own because:
- These guidelines don’t apply to all situations.
- The error warnings do not help your users.
The Best Way to Find Duplicates in Salesforce
Although Duplicate Jobs (discussed later in the guide) is intended for this use, they are only available in Salesforce’s higher versions, making them an impractical choice for everyone.
You can create a Salesforce report and use the “Show Unique Count” feature to quickly and cost-freely assess the degree of duplicate rules in your Salesforce database.
Create a custom report type utilizing the “Duplicate Records Items” object from the object relationship to take this a step further.
How might deduplication be expanded in your Salesforce organization?
Make your own duplicate rules in Salesforce: Salesforce allows you to make your own. Of course, there are limits to how far you can extend duplication restrictions, but you might find that they’re plenty without investing more money to stop duplicates in the future.
Depending on your organization’s size and capacity, invest in a third-party program to prevent duplicate records and discover a deduplication solution for your current records.
Create your own Salesforce duplicate rules for prevention
You must immediately activate these Salesforce duplication rules. Making these rules will help you understand how Salesforce duplicate rules operate so that you can eventually go on to a more sophisticated solution from AppExchange.
- Account Exact Name
- Account Name Potential Match
- Lead-to-Lead Email Exact Match
- Lead-to-Contact Email Exact Duplicate Rule
- Contact-to-Contact Email Exact Duplicate Rule
- Contact-to-Lead Email Exact Duplicate Rule
Create your own Salesforce duplicate rules for prevention
You must immediately activate these six Salesforce duplication rules. Making these rules will help you understand how Salesforce duplicate rules operate so that you can eventually go on to a more sophisticated solution from AppExchange.
Account Exact Name Rule
Start with accounts first. Users undoubtedly have a tight deadline when they establish Accounts (actually, they always have a deadline!). However, regardless of how much training you offer, it’s likely that they won’t look up to this company to discover if it already exists. Therefore, we can assume that our users will produce duplicates.
To prevent the creation of numerous Accounts with the exact same name.
- Make an exact name matching rule for accounts.
- Create an Exact Name Duplicate Rule after that.
- Create a unique error message for the Matching Rule you just made.
- Make certain that “Block” is chosen for both the Create and Edit Actions.
The next step is to turn on the Account Exact Name Duplicate Rule.
Account Name Potential Match
Users with accounts with slightly different names will be warned of a potential duplicate by the Account Name Potential Match Duplicate Rule. For instance, businesses that use a similar name for multiple regions, such as “Capgemini Pune” or “Capgemini Paris,” allow users to put “Inc.” instead of “Incorporated” in the firm name.
Salesforce’s fuzzy logic must be created to generate this identical rule, and a distinct error message must be used.
Here’s how to construct a Salesforce Account Name Potential Match Matching Rule.
You must ensure that the Allow on Create and Edit Actions checkbox is checked when creating an Account Name Potential Match Duplicate Rule.
That’s how simple it is. Your Accounts are now being watched for duplication!
Because they both refer to specific individuals, Leads and Contacts duplicate detection in Salesforce is a more complex operation than that in Accounts. And duplication rules should not only prohibit Leads and Contacts from being created twice but also stop users from creating Contacts that are already Leads and Leads that are already Contacts.
There are a total of four scenarios that could occur:
- New Leads have already been created as Leads
- New Leads have already been created as Contacts
- New Contacts have already been created as Contacts
- New Contacts have already been created as Leads
To stop them, you must create unique Duplicate Rules and give each one a particular error message that instructs the user on what to do. Additionally, it’s a good idea to associate rules with email addresses as it’s likely that multiple people will share the same first and last names.
Here’s how to construct a Salesforce Lead Email Exact Matching Rule.
Create a Contact Email Exact Matching Rule:
The remaining duplicate rules will be created using these two matching rules.
Lead-to-Lead Email Exact Match
Email Lead-to-Lead The exact match duplicate rule prevents multiple Leads from being created with the exact same email.
Lead-to-Contact Email Exact Duplicate Rule
Email Lead-to-Contact Multiple Leads-to-Contacts using the exact same email will not be duplicated thanks to the Exact Duplicate Rule.
Compare Leads to Contacts before you create it and give it a special error message.
Contact-to-Contact Email Exact Duplicate Rule
You may avoid establishing numerous Contacts with the exact same email by using this duplicate rule.
Contact-to-Lead Email Exact Duplicate Rule
By turning on this rule, you can avoid creating duplicate Contacts-to-Leads with the same email. Remember to compare Contacts and Leads and provide a particular error message.
Give it a unique error message and make sure to compare Contacts to Leads.
Removing duplicate Salesforce Organization data.
- List all the objects that need to be deduplicated, the pertinent fields for each object, the matching technique for each field, and the words to disregard.
- Questions must be answered to find the information you require.
- Tool choice.
- Implementation: Begin using the tool of your choice to set up your matching rules. Examine the outcomes, but don’t automate anything just yet.
- Maintenance: Regular cleanings are necessary to keep your Salesforce system spotless; however, setting and forgetting is not the best course of action.
Salesforce Duplicate Jobs Treatment
Duplicate Jobs check for duplicate records in your Salesforce database and allow you to act using “Compare and Merge.” If Duplicate Jobs are absent in Salesforce, you are using a lower-tier edition of Salesforce, as this is only available in the Performance and Unlimited editions.
Recap
- Use matching rules to manage the “when” and “where” of duplicate discovery with duplication rules.
- Determine “what field” and “how” to match by using the matching rules. For instance, “Account Name, Fuzzy Match” or “Email Field, Exact Match.”
- Standard Duplicate Rules: Salesforce’s default matching policies for accounts, contacts, and leads.
- Custom Duplicate Rules: Duplicate rules developed through the development of unique solutions.
- Identical names are considered an exact match.
- Potential match: a possible duplicate that might actually be a different account.
- Duplicate Jobs: Check your Salesforce database for duplicates and use “Compare and Merge” to take action.
