Configure Matching and Duplicate Account Rules

Configure Matching and Duplicate Account Rules Compatible with Community Hub

Your association can use Salesforce Duplicate Management in conjunction with Community Hub to alert staff when constituents create a duplicate account, either via the company management roster or during the account creation process.

Salesforce matching and duplicate rules are powerful, but it also takes wisdom to know how to configure these correctly to avoid unexpected results. While this page outlines the duplicate rule settings to use, you need to know how to configure both matching rules and duplicate rules before proceeding. We strongly recommend reading Duplicate Account Management and completing the Trailhead module referenced there, and then returning to this page.

This page explains how to configure matching rules and duplicate rules for business accounts and person accounts that are compatible with Community Hub. The rules for business accounts and person accounts are mutually exclusive; you can create just the business account rules, just the person account rules, or both.

To be clear, these duplicate rules do all of the following actions in both Community Hub and Staff View:

• Display an alert during account creation that this new account potentially duplicates an existing account(s), with an option to select one of them.
• Silently report that a user ignored the alert during account creation and created an account anyway.
• Silently report that a user edited account data in a way that it duplicates another account.

These duplicate rules do not do any of the following actions:

• Display an alert to a user that is editing account data in a way that it duplicates another account (they do report on it, however)

If you want to use these actions in Staff View:

• It is possible, but you should create separate duplicate rules that only apply to Staff View users because the Community Hub experience for these actions is not the same. Learn how to Configure Duplicate Rules to Apply to a Specific User Profile.

If you want to use these actions in Community Hub:

• You can block account creation and editing, but there are considerations around configuring that. Read our guide on how to Reduce Duplicate Accounts Coming from Community Hub.
• Community Hub supports a duplicate rule configured to allow edits with the Alert and Report functionality. If a duplicate rule is configured this way, it treats the duplicate rule the same way it treats a duplicate rule configured to block edits. Specifically, Community Hub will present a generic error message when they make a duplicate-causing edit to a record, and if they continue to reattempt saving the record, it continues to present the same error message, meaning they can never actually save the record. To learn more about how Community Hub responds to a duplicate rule configured to block, read about blocking in Reduce Duplicate Accounts Coming from Community Hub

In orgs where Nimble AMS was installed after the Summer '18 release, the Nimble AMS Account Duplicate Rule and Nimble AMS Person Account Duplicate Rule are already created for you, but you should still review this page to:

• Check if they have been modified in your org
  
• Ensure the standard matching rules work well with your Community Hub pages and, if not, follow the steps to create custom matching rules
• Ensure the matching rules and duplicate rules are active
• Understand what they are doing.

If Nimble AMS was installed in your org prior to the Summer '18 release, these duplicate rules do not exist in your org, so keep reading to learn how to create them.

Configure and Activate Matching Rules

Each duplicate rule must be associated with at least one corresponding matching rule to know what actually entails a "duplicate" account. You have a couple options here: use standard matching rules or create custom matching rules.

Deciding Whether to use Standard or Custom Matching Rules

Salesforce includes standard matching rules, including one for accounts and one for person accounts.

• The benefit to using standard matching rules is they include built-in, industry-standard matching algorithms that do a great job accurately determining if an account is actually a duplicate.

• The downside to using standard matching rules is that your constituents may not actually trigger these matching rules because they didn't provide enough information in the forms in your Community Hub pages.

  

  The Community Hub pages that are associated with duplicate checking are:

  – Create Account

  – Add Individual

  – Add Affiliation

1. To make an educated decision here, you first need to understand the matching logic of the standard matching rules:
   1. If you're preventing duplicate company/business accounts, read about the Standard Account Matching Rule
   2. If you're preventing duplicate individual/person accounts, read about the Standard Person Account Matching Rule.
2. Make a decision based on your business rules and what your team is willing and able to change in Community Hub:
   1. If the matching logic in the standard matching rules meets your needs, and your Community Hub pages are configured (or your business allows them to be re-configured) to include fields that will trigger the matching logic, you should use the standard matching rules.
   2. If the logic in the standard matching rules doesn't meet your needs—for example, you have custom fields you want in your matching logic—or if business rules prevent your team from modifying your Community Hub pages, you should use custom matching rules 

Use Standard Matching Rules

This is very simple since they already exist:

1. If you're preventing duplicate company/business accounts, activate the Standard Account Matching Rule
2. If you're preventing duplicate individual/person accounts, activate the Standard Person Account Matching Rule 
3. Ensure the forms on your Community Hub pages, listed above, are configured such that users actually have a likelihood of triggering the standard matching rules.

Use Custom Matching Rules

Here, we'll create one or two custom matching rules:

1. If you're preventing duplicate company/business accounts, create a custom matching rule where the Object is Account.
2. If you're preventing duplicate individual/person accounts, create a custom matching rule where the Object is Person Account.
   
3. Configure these custom matching rule(s) to include your business' desired matching logic—which may include custom fields—and also reflects the fields displayed in your Community Hub pages. You want to make sure your constituents actually have a shot at triggering the matching rule(s)!

Configure and Activate Duplicate Rules

1. If you're preventing duplicate company/business accounts, create a duplicate rule with the following values:

   Field	Value
   Rule Name	Nimble AMS Account Duplicate Rule
   Description	Duplicate rule for business account records.
   Object	Account
   Record-Level Security	Enforce Sharing Rules
   Active	Selected
   Action on Create	Allow: Alert and Report
   Action on Edit	Allow: Report
   Alert Text	Possible duplicate account. The data enter matches an existing record in the system.
   Matching Rule	<Select either the custom accountmatching rule you created or the Standard Account Matching Rule>

2. If you're preventing duplicate individual/person accounts, create a duplicate rule with the following configuration:

   Field	Value
   Rule Name	Nimble AMS Person Account Duplicate Rule
   Description	Duplicate rule for persons account records.
   Object	Person Account
   Record-Level Security	Enforce Sharing Rules
   Active	Selected
   Action on Create	Allow: Alert and Report
   Action on Edit	Allow: Report
   Alert Text	Possible duplicate account. The data enter matches an existing record in the system.
   Matching Rule	<Select either the custom person account matching rule you created or the Standard Person Account Matching Rule>

Some Considerations and Tips

• Do not change the Action on Create or Action on Edit to be more restrictive. Read the warning at the top of this page.
• You can change the Alert Text, just be aware that it shows up in both Community Hub and Staff View.
• You can include Conditions to have these only apply in certain situations or for certain users. An advanced tip is to have multiple duplicate rules, each covering a different use case or user base. A common scenario is having different matching rules and duplicate rules in Staff View as opposed to Community Hub. Read more TBD.

Related Links

• Enable Duplicate Services
• Enable Duplicate Services
• Customize Duplicate Rules (external)
• Customize Matching Rules (external)
• Standard Account Matching Rule (external)
• Standard Person Account Matching Rule (external)
• Manage Duplicate Records (external)