Removing Duplicate Contacts

When contacts are created in Hero, a search is carried out to see if they already exist. This is to prevent contacts being duplicated. This search is not always successful as the data may differ slightly between the existing contact and the details you have entered, or the import data had full details against the contact in one place but only partial in another.

Failure to find unique matches will result in an additional record for the same contact being added.  Any updates to the contact would have to be done more than once.

Example:

In this example you will see that Sherrill Poppins appears under Caregivers twice. She is linked to her own children (Martha and Mary) and she is also linked to Steven Poppins-Smith. She has been created twice as her email address matched for Martha and Mary but when processing Steven, she was only an Emergency Contact and had no email address entered.

MERGE CONTACTS

The following steps will turn the above example into this.

By having all students linked to the same contact record, if the basic details change for Sherrill e.g. phone number, the change will only need to be made once.

For duplicates where at least one has an email address

1.  Find the email address for the contact by clicking on the contact's name. If your first occurrence of the name does not have an email address then try the next. If more than one does, ask the caregiver which is still valid/preferred. Remember that email addresses cannot be shared.

2.  Copy the email address to your clipboard.

3.  Click on the name of the contact without the email address or with an invalid/unwanted email address.

4.  Paste the email address into the email address field.  This will activate the merge process. 

5.  Click Adding or Updating a Contact's Email Address

For duplicates where none have an email address

Unlike the above, this is a manual process.

1. Decide which duplicate account you wish to keep. Generally this will be either the one with the most data, or the latest. It is useful to temporarily make this record stand out from the other duplicates, by perhaps making the surname capitals or adding a 'keep' suffix to the name.

2. Copy any appropriate (and up-to-date) information from unwanted duplicates to the one you are keeping so as no details are lost.

3. On the associated student's contact page remove the unwanted duplicate(s) by clicking the X button, leaving just the version identified in step 1 above.

4. If no copy of the contact is showing, click Add new contact and search by name, then select the version identified in step 1 above.

5. After all students have been processed, edit the remaining contact to remove the identifying caps/suffix.

If you have any questions around this procedure please contact helpdesk.