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Create and Activate Matching Rules and Duplication Rules

Emma at improveit 360
  • Updated

Out-of-the-box Salesforce provides a set of Standard Matching Rules to prevent duplication of Contact and Account data. Activating these Rules or creating your own custom Matching Rules and activating them ensures that you do not create duplicates in your database. 

NOTE: To prevent eLead Conversion failure, you should not create Duplication Rules and Matching Rules on the Account object. You can create Rules on the Contact object and the eLead conversion will still create an eLead and new Sales Opportunity record. 

See also native Salesforce Help documentation: 

Click on the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the screen and go to Setup

Search for Matching Rules and go to the Matching Rules menu

 

Matching Rule for Contact (directly from Salesforce) 

Standard Contact Matching Rule (salesforce.com)

In short, Salesforce Uses a "Match Key" when matching Contact records. Below are the Match Key details:

Standard Account Matching Rule (salesforce.com)

We do NOT recommend using the native Salesforce Account Matching Rule as it will prevent eLeads from being able to be created. 

If you would like to create your own Matching and Duplicate Rule on the Account object, we recommend using the Record Type and Type fields in your Matching criteria. You should exclude Customer Record Type from all Matching Rules, to allow eLeads to flow into the system as designed.  

 

 

If the Contact matching criteria is acceptable for your business, click Activate next to all out-of-the-box Matching Rules. Although improveit 360 does not utilize the Lead object, you will need to Activate the Lead Rule as well as the Contact Rule. 

 

If your company would prefer to match critical Contact data differently, you can create your own Rule by clicking New Rule. 

We recommend taking this Salesforce Trailhead training course before creating new Matching Rules: 

Resolve and Prevent Duplicate Data in Salesforce

 

Next, you'll want to Activate the Duplicate Rules for these Matching Rules as well. 

In the Setup menu, find Duplicate Rules

Activate the Standard Rule for Contacts with Duplicate Leads

This Rule will prevent a Duplicate Contact from being created when an eLead is received. Note: It does not prevent a New Account, or a new Sales Opportunity from being created. 

 

1. Preventing Duplicates in Your Data

It is important to prevent duplicates in your data. With improveit 360, you have the power to choose how you identify duplicates and what your system allows. Preventing duplicates is made up of two components, Matching Rules and Duplicate Rules.

  • Matching Rules: identify what field and how to match on that field
    • Ex. Email field, exact match or Account Name, fuzzy match
  • Duplicate Rules: control what to do with duplicate record depending on when and where they are identified
    • Ex. Alert User or block creation
    • Note: You should not activate these in your Production org before testing. When creating and testing Duplicate and Matching rules, you should not create them without careful consideration and testing in a Sandbox environment.

The most common uses of Duplicate and Matching Rules are to prevent duplicate Accounts and Contacts. Your company may also want to prevent duplicate Sales Opportunities based on certain criteria.

Your i360 org comes with rules for the Account and Contact. Review Salesforce’s documentation on these below, if the matching criteria is applicable to your business, these rules can be activated.

When visiting a record that has potential duplicates, you will also be notified at the bottom of the page. By clicking View Duplicates you can view a list of potential duplicates and merge them if applicable. If you merge duplicates, be sure to correctly identify the principal record. In most cases, this will be the record that was created correctly first. Be cautious when merging duplicates as this cannot be undone.

 

Matching Rules:

For this exercise, we will create a Matching Rule for the Sales Opportunity to prevent duplication if there is an existing Sales Opportunity with an exact match on Contact and Interested In.

  • Follow Along:
    • Navigate to Setup > in the Quick Find search for Matching Rules > select Matching Rules > click New Rule > in the Object dropdown select the Sales Opportunity > click Next > enter the following information and click Save:
    • Rule Name: Contact and Interested In
    • Unique Name: this will auto populate
    • Description: Contact and Interested in values are an exact match for an existing Sales Opportunity.
    • Matching Criteria:
Field Matching Method Match Blank Fields
Interested In Exact
Contact Exact

 

Duplicate Rules:

We will use the Matching Rule from the previous exercise to determine what will occur when there is a Sales Opportunity with an exact match on Contact and Interested In.

For each Duplicate Rule, we need to select if it should be Allowed or Blocked and can provide an Alert message to the User.

  • Follow Along:
    • Navigate to Setup > in the Quick Find search for Duplicate Rules > select Duplicate Rules > click New Rule > from the dropdown select Sales Opportunity > enter the information specified below and click Save:
      • Rule Name: Contact and Interested In
      • Description: Alerts User when creating a duplicate Sales Opportunity when Contact and Interested In are an exact match.
      • Action On Create: Allow, check the checkbox for Alert and Report
      • Action On Edit: leave blank
        • Note: This means that after a duplicate Sales Opportunity has been created, Users will be able to Edit the record without seeing an additional Alert Message.
      • Alert Text: make any changes needed
      • Matching Rule: Contact and Interested In (the Matching Rule created in the previous exercise)
        • Note: Each Duplicate Rule must have an active Matching Rule assigned to it.

Testing your Duplicate and Matching Rules:

  • Follow Along Step 1:
    • Navigate to Setup > Matching Rules > click Activate next to the Contact and Interested In rule
  • Follow Along Step 2:
    • Navigate to Setup > Duplicate Rules > click Activate next to the Contact and Interested In rule
  • Follow Along Step 3:
    • Navigate out of Setup using the App Launcher > select the Navigation Items drop down > click on Accounts and select a test Account > click on the Related tab > scroll down to Sales Opportunities > create a Sales Opportunity > enter the information for another Sales Opportunity using the same Contact and Interested In
    • If your Duplicate and Matching Rules you created in the previous exercises are correct, you will receive an Alert message before saving the record. Click “View Duplicates” to see more information.
      • Note: Since our Duplicate Rule will allow creation of duplicates, but give us an Alert Message, we will still be able to save this record. If you don’t want Users to save the duplicate, select the Action on Creation of “Block.”

 

Matching and Duplicate Rules for Sales Opportunity object

In addition to Matching Rules on Account and Address you may want to prevent lead inquiry duplication for the same Product Category on Sales Opportunities.

In the example below, we received a lead inquiry for the same Contact just one day apart. In reality there should be only one Sales Opportunity here, to ensure we're not calling the Contact from two List Views: 

To prevent two Sales Opportunities from being opened for the same Contact for the same Product Category, a Matching Rule and Duplicate Rule should be used.  

You may also want to check against the Result values and the Expired On field so that if there is a Dead lead or Sold lead, a new Sales Opportunity would still be created. 

 

First, create the Matching Rule to match on Contact and Interested In. 

Save and Activate the Matching Rule. 

Next, you'll need to create the Duplicate Rule which uses the Matching Rule as criteria to determine if the record creation action should be allowed or blocked. 

Be sure to select the correct Matching Rule for the Duplicate Rule.

Consider if there are other criteria like Result and Expired On Date your organization wants to add as Conditions to this Rule. Above we are using 

  • Result 'not equal to' Sold or Dead AND
  • Expired On date 'equals' Blank (null)

Note: Some organizations may want to Block Users from creating duplicate records, rather than simply Alerting them to the potential duplicate. The next section of this Article covers Block versus Alert settings. 

Note: If the User is attempting to create a new record or edit an existing record and duplication is suspected based on the Matching Rule, we are alerting the User with an on-screen alert and reporting their action to our System Administrator user. 

 

Difference between Alert and Block

This is what the system will show if you Alert the User to the duplicate but do not prevent the record from being created. 

If you setup your Duplicate Rule to Block the User from creating a duplicate record...

This is what the User will see on-screen. They will not be permitting to Save.  

 

Matching and Duplicate Rule for Address object 

Likewise, you may want to create a Matching Rule and Duplicate Rule on the Address object to prevent duplicate Address records from being created. 

The Matching details should match on a Fuzzy Street Address as a best practice. 

Save and Activate the Matching Rule. 

Next create the Duplication Rule and determine if you want to Alert or Block the User from creating duplicates. 

Activate the Duplicate Rule. 

When a User tries to create a duplicate Address record, they will see this error: 

 

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