Duplicate records are almost inevitable. For users, having duplicates in the system could cause undue frustration. By having a duplicate record vital information could be present on separate records and will make the relationship difficult to manage. Outside of stressing good behavior for record creation, such as searching prior to creating, there are some tools available that will aid an administrator with managing the duplicate records.

Some of the tools that can be helpful are: Duplicate Check for Salesforce, DupeCatcher,Dupeblocker, DemandTools Single Table Deduplicator, Cloudingo, RingLead, andSalesforce.com Merge Contacts.

1. Duplicate Check for Salesforce

Duplicate Check for Salesforce is a native force.com app provided by Addressed World. This tool will allow duplicate prevention, a button on contact records, batch merging of records, and duplicate search. This tool also allows fuzzy search. The tool can be used by end users or managed by the administrator. Addressed World offers a free version with limited functionality, paid versions are also available.

2. DupeCatcher

DupeCatcher is an app provided by Symphonic Source. This tool allows duplicate prevention by blocking duplicate records from being created. If existing duplicates exist in the system, DupeCatcher will allow the records to be merged. Potential duplicate records are also flagged in the system. DupeCatcher has a unique feature that allows an administrator to analyze the potential duplicate records in the system prior to actually rolling out the tool to the users.

3. DupeBlocker

DupeBlocker is a force.com native app provided by CRMFusion. CRMFusion has provided DupeBlocker to be an extension of the tools available in DemandTools. DupeBlocker will prevent duplicate records from being created. The system administrator creates duplicate record scenarios; the scenario can prevent the record from being created or only present a warning alert to the user.

4. DemandTools Single Table Deduplicator

Single Table Deduplicator is a tool provided by CRMFusion available in the DemandTools suite. Unlike some of the other tools available, this tool is capable of merging records from different objects such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, case, leads, solution, tasks, and custom objects. The returned duplicate records can be manually merged allowing selection of the master fields or the records be merged based on a user-defined rule. The tool is only available to system administrators.

5. Cloudingo

Cloudingo is a cloud-based app provided by Symphonic Source. Cloudingo syncs with your Salesforce instance and allows filters to be built to find duplicate records. A dashboard is provided within Cloudingo to display all potential duplicates. Regular scans of data along with automated tasks will enable Cloudingo to find duplicates and perform merges based on user defined business rules. Along with the automated checks and merges, an import file can be analyzed in Cloudingo to identify duplicates prior to import.

6. RingLead

RingLead provides a suite of duplicate management tools. Duplicate Diagnostic, Duplicate Removal, and Duplicate Prevention are the tools available in the suite. Duplicate Diagnostic is a free tool that will analyze your data to determine the cleanliness. Duplicate removal works with merge reports to identify duplicates then allows records to be merged in mass or individually. Duplicates can be prevented with RingLead’s Duplicate Prevention suite of applications. The suite of applications will work with manual data entry, web to lead forms, and data imports. A unique feature of RingLead is the ability to reverse merged records.

7. Salesforce.com Merge Contacts

Salesforce.com Merge Contacts can give users the ability to merge their own contacts within the same account. Depending on the account model, it could be possible that the duplicate contact could exist within two separate accounts preventing the merge. The benefit of using this tool is that the users can proactively manage duplicate records. Unfortunately, users may not have the time to manage this task.

* Administrators and Users with Edit Read Only Fields permission can manually select which read-only fields to retain.

Managing duplicate records in Salesforce can be a tedious task. With the help of the mentioned tools, the duplicates can be efficiently managed. The state of the duplicates in the system will determine the need for either of these tools. If users are consistently creating duplicate records, duplicate prevention may be in your best interest. Otherwise, managing the duplicates periodically through batch merge may be sufficient.