[sims] Advice on finding/replacing duplicate contacts

[david_craggs]

Hi All,

 

I'm trying to get my head around sorting out our Duplicate contacts - does anyone have an easy to follow guide on the best approach to take on this? From finding the contacts through to removing them?

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[bobsmith]

If you're any good at Excel I'd suggest pulling out a report from SIMS that has all the contacts, their phone numbers etc and their relationship to any students.

 

You can then do a check on mobile numbers since these are pretty unique to people and find the duplicate records.

 

Then you have to pick the duplicate you think is the most comprehensive and accurate and replace the less good duplicates everywhere.

 

Never found a fast way of doing it, but after a couple of run throughs I've got our duplicates down to zero.

 

I've then retrained our admin staff to avoid creating the duplicates in the first place!

[dapaulio]

You could run diagnostics within sims which reports potential duplicates. Also reports on other potential issues like blank first name etc

[saggu]

I had the same issue and took me ages to find and delete the duplicate contacts.

There must be a an easier and quicker way!!

[superfletch]

I'd start by first deleting the unlinked contacts, it's under Tools | Housekeeping

 

Then I'd do as bobsmith said but start my report from the contacts focus so: Reports | Design Report | Focus | Contact

 

Include any good identifiers on the report data that you can, sort it by surname and output to excel.

 

Tedious but it should help you identifying them.

[minimoo]

For an initial start:

 

Create a report of contacts - name + housenumber + postcode + gender

Then in excel add a column that combines house number + postcode + gender into a single cell.

Then use the group/subtotal functionality under data to get a count of the number of times house+postcode+gender appear.

 

There's a reasonable chance that 80% of anything with a value of 2 or more would be a duplicate and needs investigating.

 

P.S. I'd probably be inclined to get addresses tidied + verified first, so you know the house number + postcode links are correct.