Merge Duplicate Records

Please take great care when you are merging data: double-check the records, as they cannot be “un-merged” by Veracross. Contact your account manager if you believe you have accidentally merged records incorrectly.

Overview

When two or more records exist for the same person, household, or organization, they should be merged so that each entity is represented by one record in Veracross. Read more about duplicate record management.

Records may be merged from any query that contains the relevant primary key (e.g., Person ID or Household ID), but pre-built “Duplicate Record” queries are often used as starting points.

Only those with the Merge_Records security role are able to perform merges.

Pre-built Duplicate Records Queries

There are three pre-built queries on the System homepage designed to find duplicates:

• Duplicate Households
• Duplicate People
• Duplicate Organizations

These queries are recommended starting points for merging duplicate records in Axiom, as by default the “Merge Duplicate Records” visualization is selected and Subtotal Headers are applied to the “Dupe Group” field. See below for how to display an additional field to include in the Surviving Record display.

It is worth noting that if no merging duplicate record action has been taken on a Person or Household record within 45 days of being flagged, the system will automatically unflag the record as a duplicate. Organizations will be unflagged after 90 days.

Basic Steps to Merge Records

From the query results grid:

1. Check up to five boxes on the left to select the rows to be merged. Selecting none will merge all records (up to the limit of five) in the query results. Tip: Click the subtotal header’s checkbox to select all records in that subtotal.
2. Click the Action menu  and select Merge Duplicate Records, or use the shortcut key Ctrl-M.
3. Select the surviving record when prompted. The one with the lowest key value (often the oldest)  will be selected by default.
4. Click Merge Duplicate Records.

The check boxes will spin to indicate they are being merged. Once the procedure completes, the surviving record remains checked and the consumed records will be highlighted and have icons indicating success  or failure . Any failure message will be reflected in the icon’s tooltip.

Merge Additional Records

To merge additional records, uncheck the surviving record, select new records, and use the Axiom Action menu to initiate the next record merge.

It is not necessary to wait until the merge finishes before merging additional records. However, because the surviving record remains checked after merging, it is imperative to uncheck the surviving record prior to checking additional records to merge. Failure to do this will result in the wrong records being inadvertently merged.

Query Design

It is possible to merge records via the Action menu  from any query as long as three conditions are met:

1. The underlying table reflects the type of record to be merged. For example, to merge people, the query needs to be based on the Person table. The underlying table is indicated below the field list in the lower left of the query design.
2. The primary key (e.g., Person ID or Household ID) is included in the query results. For example, the Household ID would need to be included if merging households.
3. The “Merge Duplicate Records” visualization is selected (see below).

For example, it is not possible to merge people from an enrollment query, even if the Person ID field is pulled in.

“Merge Duplicate Records” Visualization

On the “Query” tab in the query design, select the Merge Duplicate Records visualization.

Display an Additional Field

The only configuration option on the right is a drop-down to select an additional field to include in the Surviving Record display. This allows additional information to be visible when selecting the surviving record. It can be useful for verifying the correct survivor is being chosen or that the correct set of records was chosen. Read more about query properties and visualizations.

Click Run Query to view the results grid and perform the merge.