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Can you update a field instead of doing a merge on found duplicates

cch
Observer

We are pulling airport data from multiple sources. In our scenario, the identifiers (IATA, ICAO, and local) for an airport can be the same but that does not mean it's a duplicate. We are keeping airport history so it is possible the codes are the same but the airport name changed or the codes were for a closed airport and are now being used by a different airport at a different location, or they are a duplicate. To be 100% sure, we need to manually determine if the two records are duplicates. 

I can get the list of potential duplicates, however I do not want to merge. The data coming from the FAA is always the winning record. For our solution, we have a custom field IsActive. So the FAA records already have IsActive set to true. We have a sharing rule to only allow our external customers to see airports where IsActive is true. We have a second field IsDuplicate to indicate this is a potential duplicate.

is it possible to set the IsDuplicate flag on the losing record instead of merging. This way for those records that do not have IsDuplicate set to true we can set IsActve to true. We get a feed every night for US and international airports and it would be more work to exclude records that were merged over just marking them as a duplicate and not showing them.

1 REPLY 1

AnthonyValidity
Validity Team Member
Validity Team Member

Hi @cch ,

It is not directly possible to update a field on duplicate records in Dedupe automatically.  If it is a manual job where you're going through the preview screen you can edit fields there and flag them.  If you want this to be more automated I believe this is possible using the Import module.

You would first run the Dedupe scenario and export the preview screen instead of actually merging.  You would take the ID file export and use it in Import.  The duplicate ID column would then be used to match to those records and then you would use a constant to update the field you'd like to use to flag them.

I've created a case on your behalf for my team and someone will be reaching out to you shortly to go into more details if you need it.

Regards,

Anthony Lardiere Jr
Senior Customer Success Manager