eradiant docs

Potential duplicate contacts

Overview

Under Contact module → Duplicates (page title: Potential duplicate contacts) you find contact pairs the system flagged as possible duplicates that need your manual decision.

ERADIANT runs a regular duplicate scan in the organization. There are two stages:

  1. Safe duplicates are merged automatically — they do not appear in this list.
  2. Potential duplicates land here for manual review (merge or dismiss).

Permission: The Duplicates menu item is only visible if you have Contacts – View: all. Merge and Dismiss require the same permission.

Prerequisite: Duplicate scanning must be enabled for your organization. If it is off, the list stays empty and no new pairs are created — contact your ERADIANT administrator.

What you see in the list

The table shows per pair:

  • Contact A and Contact B (name and primary email, link to contact detail page)
  • Detected (date the pair was created)
  • Actions: Merge and Dismiss

There is no field-by-field comparison in the list. Open both contacts via the links and compare address, additional emails, leads, institutions, etc. before deciding.

How pairs are detected

Safe duplicates (automatic, not in this list)

Contacts are merged when they simultaneously meet:

  • at least one identical email (normalized, including e.g. user+tag@gmail.com → user@gmail.com)
  • at least one identical first-name part (e.g. “Anna” from “Anna-Sophie”)
  • at least one identical last-name part

Multiple contacts can form a group via transitive email chains (A↔B and B↔C → A, B, C are merged).

Potential duplicates (manual list)

Two detection paths:

With shared email

  • The contacts share at least one normalized email.
  • Additionally the name is similar (fuzzy): at least one first- or last-name part with sufficient similarity (threshold approx. 66%).

Name only (no shared email)

  • No shared normalized email.
  • But first and last name are strongly similar (threshold approx. 90% per part).

Dismissed pairs (status “dismissed”) are not suggested again.

Actions

Merge

Confirmation text in the UI:

The older contact is kept as the main contact. Name, address, and other data are merged. All leads, activities, and links are transferred. This action cannot be undone.

Main contact = the contact with the earlier creation date. The other is deleted.

Contact data

  • First/last name: the longer value is kept (double names are not lost).
  • Title, salutation, artist name, biography, phone: missing fields on the main contact are filled from the duplicate.
  • Comment: non-empty texts are appended.
  • Primary email: stays that of the main contact; differing emails from the duplicate move to additional contact data.
  • Phone / address: same — main field stays, additional values in additional contact data.
  • External IDs: union of both lists.

Links

  • Images and program speaker assignments are moved to the main contact.
  • Institutions: position on the main contact stays; missing institutions are adopted. If the duplicate had the same institution, the duplicate position on the deleted contact is removed.

Leads and event context

Depending on lead type and event:

  • If the main contact already has a lead for the same event of type participant invitation, activities and member roles are transferred to this lead, the duplicate’s lead is deleted. A system activity Contact merge is created.
  • Lead categories of the deleted lead are moved to the main lead if Multiple categories per lead is allowed for the event or the main lead has no category yet (deduplicated per category ID).
  • If the main contact has no matching lead, the duplicate’s lead remains; the main contact is linked as involved contact.
  • Other lead types (e.g. speaker, general) are not merged into an event lead but linked via involved contact.

Access vouchers

  • Vouchers that were on the duplicate’s lead are moved to the main lead.
  • You can keep them as secondary vouchers — depending on the event setting Keep secondary vouchers active after contact merge.
  • Voucher product recompute runs automatically afterward.

Dismiss

Confirmation text:

This pair is marked as not a duplicate. It will not be suggested again in future runs.

There is no data change to the contacts. Exactly this contact pair is dismissed — it does not reappear in later scans even if names or emails change.

Usage

  • Review the list regularly, especially after imports, sync runs, or event participant matching.
  • Before merging, open both contact detail pages (leads, vouchers, mailing history).
  • After merges with event leads: check Lead categories and access vouchers on the main lead.
  • Dismiss only when you are sure they are two different people — otherwise duplicate mailings and split statistics result.