Bulk Merge allows you to scan for and merge duplicates quickly. If you have a bunch of duplicates to clean up or just want to see how many duplicates there are, Bulk Merge can help.
Setup
To use Bulk Merge, assign the Potential Duplicates Bulk Merge permission set to the user.
Like the Potential Duplicates record component, Bulk Merge relies on Salesforce duplicate rules. Please take a few moments to ensure your Duplicate rules are configured correctly for your organization.
Accessing Bulk Merge
Navigate to your App Launcher in Salesforce and type in “Bulk Merge” to locate the app in your org. In the app, you can see the default object with duplicates displayed and the dropdown to choose any object you want to merge. The list of objects shown is based on objects with duplicate rules. If you do not see the object you want to de-dupe, check your duplicate rules.
In the application, you can select run a duplicate search, select a specific record set, or select the entire list of duplicate records and start the merging process. After selecting records, you can manually merge or Automerge them.
Duplicate Record Search
When records are created or updated before a duplicate rule is created, they may not show up as a duplicate. If you’ve recently changed or created duplicate rules, click Run Duplicates Search to re-evaluate duplicate rules against all the records for that object. Depending on the number of records, this may take a few minutes to several hours. Click the Refresh button at any time to see new duplicates that have been identified.
Manual Merge
When you select records and choose Merge Selected, you’ll have the option to continue or auto-merge. If you continue, you’ll see a screen for each group of duplicate records, one group at a time. This is a simple screen that allows you to choose the principal record, and then specify which field values from the duplicate records you want to keep.
If you see a group of records that are not duplicates, or you don’t want to merge right now, you can click Skip to go to the next group. You can revisit this duplicate record group another time because they’ll stay in your list of duplicates.
Tip: The principal record is the record that will maintain system audit fields such as ID and created date. This can affect external integrations that store the Salesforce IDs.
Once you’re satisfied with our selection, you click “Merge and Continue.” This will merge the records, Marc will disappear from the list, and there will be only one contact record with all the data you selected. All related records will be moved to the principal record.
Automerge
Automerge allows you to speed up the merge process by removing the comparison screen and letting the system choose which record to merge everything into. When you click Automerge, you can choose a couple of options:
Choose whether the system should make the master record the Oldest, Newest, or Most Recently Modified record. This is based on the Created Date for oldest and newest, or Last Modified Date for most recently modified.
Choose to concatenate long text and rich text fields. This will combine the values in any fields with those types in the resulting record.
For all other fields, the value on the master record will be kept unless it is blank, in which case the value will be copied from one of the duplicate records. All related records will be moved to the master record.
Let’s say, for example, you have 3 records, and the oldest record is missing important data, such as a Contact’s email, but it is present in the third record. If you choose the oldest as the master record, once Automerge completes the job, the oldest record will be the only record remaining, but it will have the email from the third record.
Whether you want to manually merge records or let the system do it for you, Bulk Merge is the tool that empowers you to do both. Either way, Bulk Merge allows you to clean up hundreds of records in a matter of minutes saving you countless hours and reducing cost and complexity in your business.