Understanding Salesforce Duplicate Rules

Data is the core of the digital era. Managing accurate, clean data is essential for marketing, sales, service, and overall business operations. Duplicate data or records not only disrupt operations but also waste time and degrade the customer experience. 

In Salesforce, duplicate records are resolved seamlessly, providing a smoother experience for users and businesses. The Duplicate Management features are essential for identifying and preventing duplicate records. In this blog post, we will focus on Salesforce duplicate rules and explain how they interact with matching rules. 

What are Salesforce Duplicate Rules?

We are all familiar with what a duplicate means, but today we will discuss duplicate rules. When managing large datasets in Salesforce, there is a high likelihood of duplicate accounts, contacts, or leads. 

To avoid duplicate records, Salesforce provides standard duplicate rules for contacts, leads, and person accounts. In addition to the standard regulations, Salesforce lets you create custom duplicate rules based on your data preferences. 

The core actions of duplication rules are: 

1. Alert: Displays an alert to the user that a duplicate record already exists. However, it allows users to ignore it and still save the record. (This will enable us to make the duplicate record.)
2. Block: This feature aggressively prevents users from saving duplicate records. (This will restrict a duplicate record from creation.)

These duplicate rules serve as enforcers that help us identify duplicates in the information based on the active matching rules.

What are Salesforce Matching Rules?

Matching rules in Salesforce Duplication Management are essential. It helps detect potential duplicate records. They identify the field and the matching logic used to compare the two records. We can select fields matching the criteria. Matching rules are the first step in identifying and resolving duplicate records. 

Salesforce supports Exact Match and Fuzzy Match methods in these rules, and admins can configure custom matching logic as well. Always remember: whichever rule you select must remain active throughout the process, but should not take any action on its own. 

Now, let’s explore how exactly you can create duplicate rules in Salesforce for better data management.

How to create Duplicate Rules in Salesforce? 

Salesforce offers standard rules for both matching and duplicate rules. Before we learn how to create Duplicate rules in Salesforce, it is essential to understand how matching rules work. Matching rules help identify duplicates in Salesforce. 

Create Custom Matching Rules

There are standard matching rules for accounts, leads, person accounts, and contacts. We can also create a custom matching rule by following these steps. 

1. Click Setup on the top right. 
2. On the screen, search for matching rules in the quick find box. 
3. Once the matching rules section appears, we can see the standard Salesforce matching rules.

4. Click New Rule, then select any object from the Object drop-down. Here, we will choose the account object.

5. Select next to fill in the matching rule details.

• Then select the field, choose the matching method, either exact or fuzzy.
• Fill in the fields, including the rule name and unique name.

6. Clicking Next opens a window with buttons to edit, delete, close, or activate. 

7. Click activate to launch the matching rule. 

Once the matching rule is activated, we can apply it to our duplicate rules.

Create Custom Duplicate rules

 To create a custom duplicate rule for the records, we have to start by: 

1. Search for duplicate rules in the quick find box, and select the new rule. Select the account object that matches the rule.

2. On the screen, to edit the duplicate rule, enter the different details.
Rule details include the rule name, record-level security settings (who the rule applies to), action (allow or block creation), and alert text.

3. In the matching rules section, choose the matching rule we created above.

4. Fill in the details and click Save. 

5. Finally, when you save the rule, activate it in the final step to launch it. 

The records will not run with duplicate rules if the rule is not activated. 

Conclusion

Data handling is one of the most crucial aspects for any organization. Having numerous leads and accounts increases the chances of duplicate data. To manage this in Salesforce, use Duplicate Management and matching rules. These work together to identify and deploy the correct way to avoid duplication. 

Apart from that, Salesforce duplicate management focuses on minimizing data redundancy to handle duplicates seamlessly, preventing them from becoming lost in similar records. So, if you want to manage your documents better or help businesses do so? Learning and practising the Salesforce Admin course is your way to enter the industry.