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Helpful Hints for Deduping Your Salesforce Database
Friday, May 24, 2013


Removing duplicate objects from the database is one of several basic cleansing operations that Salesforce administrators employ to maintain data quality at a high level.

Of course, this probably isn’t a big news flash but if you’ve just started using DemandTools you may be wondering, what’s the best way to go about deduping a Salesforce database?
There are many different types of Salesforce objects—Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Tasks, Assets, Custom Objects, etc. In what order should you dedupe them? And what measures can you take to feel confident that you’ve found most of the duplicates?

In this article, we’ll give you an overview of how to go about finding duplicate objects in your Salesforce database using the DemandTools Single Table Dedupe module.

Start with Accounts and Work Your Way Down
We usually recommend deduping in this order: Account, Contact, Lead to Lead, Lead to Contact, Lead to Account, Opportunity, and Custom Objects. If you clean up parent objects first and then move on to the children, you can use the parent IDs to improve matching of child objects. 
For example, if there’s only one “Example Inc.” in the database, it’s easier to identify child Contacts “J. Smith” and “John Smith” as duplicates. If these Contacts were attached to separate (duplicate) Accounts, establishing a match would be more difficult.

Develop a Multi-pass Dedupe Process
For each type of object, we recommend that you start with rigid matching criteria (i.e., exact field matches) and then dedupe several times with progressively looser matching criteria (e.g., fuzzy matching options, fewer fields). This will enable you to find duplicates faster and build confidence in data quality knowing that you’ve properly accounted for typos, different abbreviations and other data variations. DemandTools ships with a variety of prebuilt scenarios to assist you with this multi-pass approach. 

To keep you from being overwhelmed by the quantity of search results, we also recommend you place limits on what data will be scrutinized in each deduping pass. For example, you can break each pass up by state, creation date, or Account name (i.e., Accounts names beginning with a range of letters). Of course, if you’re only concerned with a certain subset of the database, such as the data generated at a recent tradeshow, then creating a limited deduping pass is a no-brainer.

Since there is no “undo” here, you should also view multi-pass deduping as a sensible precaution. Using a multi-pass strategy, you can also minimize any chance of experiencing problems related to Salesforce API call limits, the amount of computer RAM, or how long it takes to apply a Master Rule.

Schedule Automatic Deduping Runs
After you’ve developed some effective deduping scenarios, we recommend that you schedule them to run on a regular basis, and thus maintain data quality. Over time, you can incrementally improve data quality by modifying these scenarios and adding new ones to the schedule.


Learn More

Here’s how you can learn more about the Single Table Deduping module:

·     Consult the DemandTools Online Help System.

·     Visit the CRMfusion Tech Forum.

·     Contact us today.

posted by A Miller @ 11:26 AM,




Important DupeBlocker Notification regarding upcoming Summer '13 Release
Monday, May 13, 2013

Please note an upcoming change in the Salesforce Summer '13 release could affect the current version of DupeBlocker. This change will effect most DupeBlocker customers as it effects anyone using DupeBlocker's  “Do Not Insert”, “Do Not Update”, or “Redirect to Existing” action calls after duplicate detection.

 The background of the issue is that prior to Summer  ’13, Salesforce allowed the ability to escape HTML code in error messages.  In Summer  ’13 there is a critical update that the administrator has the option to activate which will disable this capability.  As a result the Redirect to Existing functionality will no longer work at all, and the error message displayed by DupeBlocker when a duplicate is blocked via “Do Not Insert/Update” will render the full HTML code as text in the user interface.

Duplicates will still be blocked, but the error message defined in the scenario will not be displayed properly.

Example current message:
Error: Invalid Data. 
Review all error messages below to correct your data.
Potential duplicate Lead found with a similar name and the same e-mail address. Duplicate: John Smith

Summer ’13 message (note:  only the first few lines are displayed):

Error: Invalid Data.
Review all error messages below to correct your data.
<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- var appendParam = ""; if ( document.location.href.toLowerCase().indexOf( "?isdtp=" ) >= 0 ||

We will be updating DupeBlocker to accommodate this change, but unfortunately will not be able to begin work on the upgrade until our own Developer Edition instance is upgraded to Summer ‘13 - which could be the same day or after certain customer environments could have possibly already applied the critical update. We anticipate having a DupeBlocker upgrade available approximately one week after our development instances are upgraded and we will notify all customers at that time suggesting that they install the upgrade.

To avoid any changes in DupeBlocker behavior after your Salesforce instance has been upgraded to Summer ‘13, we highly recommend that admins DO NOT apply the critical update until our DupeBlocker upgrade is available.  Please keep in mind that critical updates can also be disabled, therefore, if it is applied by an administrator that is unaware of the implications to DupeBlocker it can subsequently be disabled.

All customers WILL eventually need to upgrade their DupeBlocker application though, as at some point Salesforce will apply the critical update to all instances by default.

Please contact our support department via support@crmfusion.com , if you have any questions.

posted by A Miller @ 4:12 PM,