There are several ways to detect duplicates:
- When new records are created
- When records are imported
- By running a duplicate detection job
I think, Garfield, that you are referring to method 1, but Jeff is referring to method 3.
When new records are created duplicate detection will run (if it has been enabled) according to the duplicate detection rules. Unfortunately, within the duplicate detection rules there is no feature that allows you to specify that null values should be ignored.
So, for example, a contact with no email address will be identified as a potential duplicate for all other contacts with no email address. I'm afraid that this is just a limitation of the CRM 4.0 (and CRM 2011) duplicate detection feature.
When a system administrator runs a duplicate detection job, the administrator can specify filter criteria. Using the example above, I would run the duplicate detection job on contacts where status equals active and email address contains data. This
is a much better experience. So I normally don't run duplicate detection when users create records, and just appoint a data administrator to run duplicate detection jobs periodically and merge any duplicates.
In all methods, duplicate detection only applies to the records that the user can view, so the user has to be able to see all records to detect duplicates organization-wide. This is by design and an important part of the security model. In some deployments
duplicate records exist in different business units because of regulatory constraints.
Neil Benson, CRM Addict and MVP at Customery Ltd. You can reach me on
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