Profiles are similar to mushrooms: where there is one, there are two 🍄🍄 🌱 – but if you have duplicate profiles for the same person in FULL FABRIC, you can and should merge them. Whatever the cause of their creation (which you can read about here), duplicate profiles clutter the system, confuse staff members and lead to scattered data. Fortunately, we have just the solution: a fantastic merge tool to securely clear up the mess and streamline your database! 💥

➜ How do I go about merging a profile?

➜ How does the merge editor work?

When spotting multiple profiles for the same individual, you have to determine which is the main profile and which is the duplicate. Although the merge function is available inside every profile, the process must always begin from the main, where you're asked to select the duplicate; after that, the duplicate is merged and deleted.

We strongly recommend that you merge duplicates as you encounter them instead of accumulating. They're much easier to manage that way and don't weight as heavily upon the system. In addition, you can only merge two profiles at a time, so if there's more than one duplicate, repeat the process as necessary.

Regarding content, the merge tool automatically transfers profile info fields, emails, tasks, policy agreements, latest activity records, evaluations, campaign reports, event responses, form submissions, applications and journeys, as those are the most common needs. Everything else, such as letters, offers, payment plans, files uploaded to the profile Files tab, tags, experience entries (both those in the profile Experience tab and in the application Experience tab) and Transcripts must be relocated manually.

To find the merge tool, enter your profile of choice, access the Advanced tab and then proceed to Merge profiles:

Click Merge into this profile to open the editor.

If you can't find the Merge profiles area inside the Advanced tab, drop us a line and we'll give you access.

There are five sequential tabs to go through in the merge process: Select duplicate profile, Profile Info, Applications, Journeys and Summary. The system automatically validates if all mandatory fields have been completed whenever you attempt to move from one tab to the next, and if anything's missing, it issues an error message; you must resolve the deficiencies in order to continue.

As the name suggests, the first tab shows the profile you're starting with, displayed on the right, and requests that you search for and select the duplicate, on the left. You can only search by name and email.

Once you make a pick, the respective profile's general information is promptly exhibited, like so:

That's just for reference, not as an indication of what's going to be merged, because it's on you to make that selection down the line.

By the way, profiles are always displayed in the above order – the duplicate in the left and the one for keeps in the right –, to respect the usual tendency of working left to right when transferring information.

The second tab, Profile info, is where you define which information you wish the final profile to contain. Firstly, that means choosing the Alternative email – i.e., which of the email addresses from the duplicate profile should be preserved as the user's secondary email. Only smart email address fields are eligible, so if no options are available on your end, please contact us so we can set up your email fields as smart fields.

Underneath the email selector, you're confronted with every profile field where the information differs from one profile to the other in order to settle the conflict by deciding which should be the definitive value. Fields with matching values aren't put up for review; to give just an example using the image below, if the field Title happened to be Ms. is both profiles, it wouldn't appear here:

You can either Select all fields from top to bottom, Select all by section, or individually check your preferred entries.

Applications are also presented for consideration in the event of a conflict, along with their base information. To be more concrete:

Whatever happens to an application automatically happens to its associated journey, if there is one; so, when you tap Next to progress to Journeys, you'll see that if an application was added or discarded, so was the corresponding journey. It would be senseless to keep a journey whose associated application was deleted, after all. For journeys without applications, however, their fate must be manually decreed – it's the same Add/Delete, Discard/Keep logic as with applications.

Last, but not least, the Summary is a quick preview into how the final profile will look, for which reason it showcases not just the edits you made (signalled with a !Changed! status), but every profile info field, every application and every journey. This is your last opportunity for inspection and correction:

You must check the box I understand the consequences, delete the duplicate profile before you can Confirm and merge. Once you do that, everything will be merged and the duplicate profile will be deleted. This action is irreversible.

And voilà! One single profile where previously there were two! 💫

You have reached the end of this article. Thanks for reading! 🤓 If you have any questions or comments on the topic at hand, or if you enjoy reads like this and have article requests, let us know. Also, please leave a rating below. Your feedback is highly appreciated! 💖

________________
​PUBLISHED: December 10, 2020
​LAST UPDATED: December 14, 2020 at 3:51 p.m.