​

Duplicate Contacts & Merge — User Guide

Encore continuously checks new and imported contacts against your organization’s existing records. Exact matches (same email, same phone, or same name + date of birth) are flagged immediately; probable matches — similar names backed by a corroborating detail like the same referral source — wait in a review queue. Nothing is ever merged automatically: a person with the merge permission reviews every pair.

​

The duplicate warning on contact create

While you type a new contact’s name, email, or phone, a warning appears if a likely match exists:

• Exact match (red badge) — the email, phone, or name + DOB already belongs to an existing contact.
• Possible match (gray badge) — the name is similar and a corroborating field matches.
• Chips under each match show why it matched — for example Phone exact and Name similar (62%).

Click Open existing contact to use the existing record instead of creating a duplicate, or Dismiss & Continue if you’re sure it’s a different person. Phone formatting never hides a duplicate: (602) 555-0142, 602.555.0142, and +1 602 555 0142 all match each other. Email matching ignores case and stray spaces.

​

The duplicate review queue

Open Community Engagement → Contacts → Duplicate Review (/ce/contacts/duplicates). You’ll need the ce.contacts.merge permission. Each pending pair shows its match score, the fields that matched, where the pair was found (form, import, sync, or scan), and how long it has waited. For each pair you can:

• Compare — side-by-side drawer of both records.
• Merge — open the merge dialog (below).
• Link — record that both rows refer to the same person without merging.
• Dismiss — mark the pair as not a duplicate. A dismissed pair never resurfaces in the queue, even if the matching engine sees it again.
• Bulk dismiss — select multiple pairs with the checkboxes and dismiss them together.

​

Merging two contacts

The merge dialog shows every field where the two records disagree, side by side. The recommended value is pre-selected (the most recently updated, non-empty value); override any field before confirming. When you confirm:

• All related records — activities, calls, documents, tags, leads, relationships, messages, and external links — move to the surviving record.
• The duplicate becomes a tombstone: old links and bookmarks to it redirect to the survivor, and it disappears from lists, search, and future duplicate checks.
• The merge is fully audited on both contacts’ history timelines.

​

Undoing a merge

A merge can be undone within your organization’s undo window (72 hours by default). Open the surviving contact — the Merged record banner offers Undo merge, which restores the duplicate exactly as it was, moves its related records back, and audits the reversal. After the window closes, the undo is rejected.

​

Permissions