Is there a way in WA to merge duplicate records?

We have found that quite a few of our members have multiple accounts with different email addresses. I think this came from people not being able to figure out how to renew. (Partly user error, partly because it was not intuitive for them to go to "view profile" to renew. The biggest bulk of these problems came from memebrs who were imported into WA and didn't understand that their old member record is already in our new system)

Anyway,  Can I merge these records as opposed to deleting one of them?

Thanks,

Meagan

 

 

There is no merge function - but sounds like a very good suggestion, I will move this to wishlist to collect votes and comments

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Being able to merge records would be a very good thing.

Doing this manually is becoming a bit of a chore as our organization grows. We've been seeing more users establishing duplicate accounts by signing on with different email addresses. In some cases the "merging/purging" is not difficult -- they're only interested in getting email updates, so transferring data and deleting one record is not a big deal. However, in other cases, users are attending multiple events and joining as paid members using different accounts -- we want to consolidate the records without losing that history. Being able to merge the records electronically would be a tremendous help...

Understood - and this is moving up in our work queue.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I would love to see this option.  Many of our members and event registrants now have duplicate records and deleting and recreating the proper history with losing transaction history to clean up the records is going to create a longer term mess.  Usually it is because someone uses a different email, but I have several that are just typos. 

Being able to correct this without losing transaction history would be wonderful!  

Please add my VOTE! 

 

 

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Jennifer Taylor
Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitators Association
Membership, Registration & Website Manager
www.owra.org

We've made this one of our Top 50 - the 50 big issues we want to get developed in 2010.

We'll post when we have a solution designed, as well as a release date set. As always, please let us know if you have any ideas, insights, or suggestions on how this can the most useful for you.

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Giuliano Valentino, Useful Apricot

I use to be able to merge by fiddling with the email addresses somehow, but for the life of me I can't remember what I was doing.  Once the new changes were put in place I was unable to fool it anymore (this was between registrations and a memberships only).

I think a choice of "yes merge with existing record" after you enter an email already in use would be the easiest for me.  That way a duplicate record could opened manually, updated with the correct email and moved to correspond with the proper person.  Maybe a choice of move what?  ie. events, transactions, membership, or "all" would be helpful too.

Sounds simple, but sure it isn't.

Thanks,

Jennifer Taylor
Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitators Association
www.owra.org

 

Please count this as a "yes" vote on adding a contact merge feature. I have a person who has event history with three different accounts (student, work, personal), and I would like to preserve her attendance history without archiving or deleting the duplicates.

Thanks,
Michael Johnson

Chief_Apricot:

There is no merge function - but sounds like a very good suggestion, I will move this to wishlist to collect votes and comments

Add my yes vote to this

Chief_Apricot:

There is no merge function - but sounds like a very good suggestion, I will move this to wishlist to collect votes and comments

 

sounds like a good idea.

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Cheers,

Ben

I would also love to see this implemented.  What is the status of this enhancement? 

 I think one easy way to make this work is if you control the merge from the e-mail address.  Perhaps what you can do is allow Admin users to key a duplicate e-mail address and if the system sees it as a duplicate, you can offer two options:

"Merge the current record with an existing record (CAUTION: All contact/membership field information from this record will be replaced by the existing record information, but all registration and payment history will be retained)

"This e-mail address is already in use, please provide a unique e-mail address for this record"

 

The only real issue I can see is if they have already paid and/or applied for a membership on both records.  What rule should be used for survival?  My suggestion is that the existing record should retain the renewal date the farthest out.  So if the record being merge has a renewal date farther out than the existing record, then the existing record should be updated with that renewal date. 

 

 

Thanks James, we have actually designed this pretty much along these lines - merge will be activated from one contact record and it would be possible to select another contact record to merge with. I will add your comments re membership to development notes. 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot