[1]
Find and Merge, or De-duplicate is an option that has to be given to any administrator.
We found that after applying roles and profiles only the highest ranked role can operate the de-duplication tool - to our understanding this operation has to be given to any administrator.
[2]
Ideally, the system should be able to recognize duplicate records upon creation (by email and/or phone), and once recognized, it should automatically mark this records with a flag saying "suspected as duplicate"
August 15, 2008Posted By : Adam Stone - Zoho CRM customer and CEO/Founder of D-Tools Software
Managing duplicate records is one of the hardest things to accomplish when using CRM software. Just trying to determine what is a duplicate is hard enough and when you find a duplicate somehow you have to decide which fields need to be merged from the duplicate records.
In ZOHO the process is almost automatic. I have spent so much time on this issue with other CRM systems in the past that when I saw how ZOHO handled it I shed a little tear of joy.
Check it out. Go to any kind of record, Lead, Account, Contact, Vendor, whatever that you think is a dupe and click the Find and Merge Duplicate button.
You will go to a UI that allows you to narrow your dupe search. In this case I am using the email address and last name. I came up with 6 matches and four of them have the same email address.
I can merge three at a time so I check them and press the View Duplicates button. This is where the magic happens. I can choose which record is the master record and if the fields within each record are different I can choose which field will get merged. It works perfect. This is a huge feature that solves a huge problem and is so easy to use any temp admin staff person can do with minimal training. Not the case with any other CRM system I have used.
From a software development standpoint this is a deep and complex problem to solve. The fact that Zoho CRM does it so well is a solid indication of the thought and planning that has gone into the product.
