Duplicate Resolution - A scary phrase for a valuable process

If you're one of the many people who cringe at the thought of resolving duplicates for fear of the unknown, loss of data etc, then read on...

Duplicate resolution is the process of confirming that Joe Smith who plays at Dandenong Basketball is the same Joe Smith who plays at Nunawading. The player receives the same ID number and both Associations are updated with Joe's latest contact details. The big picture is that essentially this results in career tracking of each player in the database, from Entry level (ie Aussie Hoops, Auskick etc etc) to Junior club, representative, seniors and veterans, and even overseas. This brings many benefits, including:

• Governing bodies see one view of this participant, no matter where they play
• Leagues and Clubs receive updated contact details whenever their players register elsewhere
• Leagues and Clubs can see tribunal history of their players in other Leagues

Over the last few years, we have refined the duplicate resolution process. Previously when a duplicate was resolved, the League that the player was registering to had to choose whether to keep the contact info of the new record or the existing record, with one being over-written by the other. This caused Leagues to lose valid data in some cases, so recently we changed the 'Use new data' option (used in 95% of cases) to give the League the option to use the new data and merge fields from the existing record that don't exist in the new record.

For example, Joe Smith exists in the Dandenong database with the following fields:

• first name
• surname
• DOB
• suburb
• postcode
• gender
• mobile phone number

When he registers to Kilsyth, they ask for his email address but not his mobile phone number. When Kilsyth resolve the duplicate, both they and Dandenong now have his email address and mobile phone number, and most importantly, Dandenong don't lose his mobile number, actually, they will even receive his new mobile number if it has changed.

So how does it actually work? Currently when resolving a duplicate, you will see the below options:

Resolve Option	Explanation
This is the same person (Merge using new data as the base)	Uses NEW record member data UNLESS blank, in which case it will use the EXISTING record data
This is the same person (keep existing data)	Uses  EXISTING record member data
This is a new person	Does not change any data, member receives new National ID
Oops, delete this person	Member was added by accident
Ignore this person for now	Duplicate to be resolved later

As an administrator, if you are obtaining good data from your participants via online forms (if you're not and you want to please email Daniel Smith), then you will select the option at the top of the above list every time (unless of course the new participant is actually a different person to the existing record).


To read more about how to manage duplicates, please visit this page of our support site.