Preventing duplicate contact creation and cleaning up duplicate contacts

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Thank you so much for working on this, Sam!!!!!!!

Yes!  This is something I’ve wanted for a long time and I’m glad to hear it’s on the drawing board.  I’d be happy to speak to someone about this. 

Sam, I have spent hours cleaning up duplicate contacts (usually a result of someone just entering a name fresh when adding them to a matter, rather than scrolling through the list that pops up after typing part of their name). This was quite common with an accountant who worked on multiple trust accounts. It also happens frequently with LEADS; either an existing client contacts us via our website’s chat bot or intake form, or a potential client submits a chat AND an intake form. There are often situations where there is different information in each LEAD so being able to merge them would be most helpful.

Great insight ​@Brad - I will reach out with a few follow-up questions for you via email. Respond at your leisure!

Any update on this? I’m hoping there is a tool I might use to help clean up our duplicate leads/contacts

​@XandriClifton - Smokeball recently released 2 features that should help with this problem:

• When you assign a contact to a role on a lead/matter, you are first prompted to select an existing contact before going onto create a new one
• When you are about to save a possible duplicate, a check occurs before the contact is saved. If the system thinks you might be about to save a duplicate, we tell you and surface possible matches before allowing you to override the challenge and save the contact. Matching data is visible and the search is weighted on Phone, Email and Full Name data

Have you noticed these recent changes? Do you think they are assisting in the prevention of contact duplication?

The team is also in the design/validation phase of a merge contact function. If you would like to chat about this, “thumbs up” this comment and someone from the team will reach out for a chat. Thanks!