BigContacts Product News

Got duplicate Contact Records? A new tool for your Contact Manager!

We have just released a de-duplication (de-dupe) tool for Contact Management Software. With this new tool, you will be able to merge standard contact fields, custom fields and ALL notes & history!
This new tool will allow you to check for duplicate records using (contact names) or (email addresses) as the primary comparison points.  You can also filter for a certain subset of your contacts.  For example, you may only wish to look at all of the contact records with the last name of (Smith) in your search for duplicate records.  This tool will allow you to narrow your filter down to any subsection of contacts to make your de-duplication work more manageable.

The are two primary "use cases" for the BigContacts de-dupe tool.

Importing contacts
When importing contacts to your BigContacts account you can choose to have the de-duplication tool automatically activated after a new list of contacts has been imported.  You will find a checkbox where you can select option when using the import wizard. This will allow you to quickly and easily identify new contacts that have been imported that are in fact duplicates of records that already exist in your database.

General database maintenance
From the “Contacts” Tab in the upper left hand corner of the screen you can select the “Show All” button.  I here you will find a button labeled “De-Duplication”.  Selecting this will activate this tool and allow you to check your entire database for duplicates.
This is a very intuitive and easy-to-use tool, yet is very thorough in what it will allow you to merge in your database.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using 3 simple screens you can clean up your entire Contact Manager database.

1st Screen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1 – You will select which filtering mode you wish to use (name) or (email). Selecting "name" will group duplicates by first and last name.  Choosing "email" will group by both the personal and company email addresses. 

Step 2 - You can choose to be more specific/ narrow in your filtering by adding another level of filter.  For example, you may only want to work with all contacts that have the last name of “Smith”.  In the field provided you would type “smith”.  If you want to do a partial search use "%".  For example, if you wanted to match all contacts with a bigcontacts.com email address, you would enter "%bigcontacts.com".  This is not a required filed and is only necessary if you wish to further narrow your search.

Step 3 - Select the number of contacts that you wish to be able to view and work with per page as you go through the de-duplication process.
After you have your criteria selected, press the “Proceed” button at the bottom of the screen.
 

2^nd screen

 On this screen you will see the contacts that we found to be duplicates based on your search criteria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are a few things to pay attention to when reviewing each Contact record.

1. Number of contacts – Just under the contact name you will see the number of contacts that were found that are duplicates.
2. Field Conflicts – Just under the number of contacts you will see whether or not there were "conflicts" in any of the fields within the duplicate records.
   A conflict occurs when two contacts have different values for the same field. You will need to pick one of these values to keep.
   • If there are conflicts, you will see the name of the field and then be given the choice to select the value that you wish to remain after merging the duplicate records.
   • If there are not any conflicts, you will simply see the message "There were no field conflicts."

If you do not wish to merge a group of contacts, un-check the box in the upper right hand corner of that record. This will take these contacts out of this round of de-duplication.

For each of the remaining records, you will want to resolve any field conflicts. If there are more duplicates to check, you will see a button at the bottom to show more. Click this when you are ready to proceed.
After you have reviewed all contacts, select the "Finish" button at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.  This will save the changes you have made on this screen and move to the next screen of duplicates.

PLEASE NOTE:  You may wish to only merge certain contact records that we show as duplicates.  For example, you may have (3) “John Does” that our system has identified as possible duplicates.  You may find that only (2) are duplicates and the other record is legitimately a different/ unique “John Doe” in your system.  In this case you will follow these steps: 
“Un-check” the box in the upper right hand corner for these duplicate records.  Doing this will separate the contacts in a list of individual records. 
“Re-Check” the box in the upper right hand corner of each individual contact record that you wish to merge/ de-duplicate.
3^rd Screen
 Your duplicate contact records have now been merged!  You can now select the “Return to Contact Tab” button to return to the main system. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please feel free to comment here or send us an email at support@bigcontacts.com with any questions you may have on this article or any other aspect of BigContacts.

Please feel free to submit a support ticket or join us for a live chat should you have any questions as you work with this new module.