In this section, you will learn how to leverage the Duplicate Detection Wizard to identify duplicate records. The Duplicate Detection Wizard allows you to check for duplicate account, contact, and lead records. You can detect duplicates for all records or specify a subset of records for which you would like to detect duplicates.
For example, imagine that you are a sales representative who is assigned several hundred customer records. You are sure that you have duplicate contact records in the system due to a lack of historical maintenance, and you want to check all contacts that you own for duplicates. You can limit the records checked to only those that are assigned to you with the Duplicate Detection Wizard. The Duplicate Detection Wizard is located within Microsoft Dynamics CRM and walks you through an intuitive process of detecting duplicates.
In this exercise, you will run the Duplicate Detection Wizard and detect duplicate records in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment.
Note
USE your own Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation in place of the Adventure Works Cycle site shown in the exercise.
BE SURE TO use the Internet Explorer Web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web site, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
In the application menu toolbar, click Tools.
Click Duplicate Detection.
The Duplicate Detection Wizard opens.
Click Next.
The Select Records dialog box opens. This dialog box allows you to specify which records you would like to check for duplicates. You can specify filter criteria in this dialog box or choose a saved view to leverage its filter criteria. Additionally, you can select a saved view to populate default criteria and modify the default criteria to meet your needs.
In the Look for list, select Contacts.
Click Select and scroll through the possible filter fields to select Owner.
Select the Equals Current User operator.
Click Next.
In the Select Options dialog box that opens, you can name the duplicate detection job, specify the start time, select a desired recurrence, and identify who should be notified after the job has completed.
In the Name box, enter Duplicate Detection: Contacts That I Own. Leave the default start time, and click Next.
Tip
You are creating a system job when you complete the Duplicate Detection Wizard. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to schedule the job at intervals of 7, 30, 90, 180, and 365 days. If you would like to run the job on a different frequency, you can schedule multiple jobs to accomplish. For example, if you would like to run a job every 15 days, you can create two jobs that run every 30 days with different start dates.
Click Finish.
The duplicate detection job is run when you click the Finish button. The job identifies duplicate records but does not automatically merge or delete records that are identified. The next step is to view the results of the job and take the appropriate actions.