I'm new here, so please excuse me if this has already been discussed. When you have duplicate records and one has only the wife's name (the record to be "kept") and the other has husband and wife's names (the record to be "deleted") and you schedule a merge, why is the husband's name NOT merged into the "kept" record? The logical conclusion for a merge of duplicate records is that all "unique" information will end up in the "kept" record, yet I am not seeing this happen. Can anyone explain if (a) I'm doing something wrong, or (b) if this is a software glitch that needs to be rectified?
Bonny, Colorado Ballet
The merge process does not itself cross reference the names on the "delete" vs the keep. It just keeps whatever names are on the keep. Probably because there's no good way to know when merging if the name in the "delete" really ought to be name2 on the kept record, or if it's an alternate name for name1. This will probably be a moot point in v11 since there won't be name2s anymore. The short answer is: what you expected to happen with the name2 is not the expected behavior of the merge process.
There's really good documentation on exactly what the merge process does though, what gets moved from one record to the other vs what is automatically left as whatever it was on the "keep". I am forgetting which document it is at the moment...but I know I read it somewhere other than in the sp.
In our local merge procedure we have a section that checks if there are names in the "delete" that are not in the "keep" and not in an alias of the "keep" and if that's the case it adds an alias to the keep with the "delete"d name. This saves us the step of cleanup on dups where, for example, the keep says "William" but the delete says "Bill". So the patron remains searchable by either name. If the two names are clearly different people, in theory we'd have the person scheduling the merge add the second name as name2 on the keep prior to scheduling the merge. But if someone forgot, we'd still have it at least as an alias.
Here’s the document:
http://www.tessituranetwork.com/network/Learning/Documentation/General/Managing%20Duplicate%20Constituent%20Records.aspx
Kevin Sheehan
Senior Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
+1 888 643 5778 x 329
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
Good morning Kevin,
Thank you for the link below. After reading pages 10 through 13 three times, I cannot locate what happens to N1 and N2 during the merge process, which is at the core of my question. Perhaps you can help me. As an example:
Record 105 has only Mr. Tim Robbins, and it is the record I want to keep.
Record 2230 has Mr. Tim Robbins in N1 and Mrs. Kathy Robbins in N2, and it is the record to delete.
When the merge has been completed, the kept record does not include Mrs. Kathy Robbins, yet her name is unique and logically in my mind, it should have merged her into N2 in record 105. My executives are questioning why this is not happening. Can you please explain – and will this be address in Version 11?
Thank you for your assistance Kevin!
Bonny Reinmuth
Executive Assistant
Colorado Ballet
1278 Lincoln Street
Denver, CO 80203
bonny.reinmuth@coloradoballet.org
Phone: 303.339.1722
Fax: 303.861.7174
www.coloradoballet.org
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Kevin SheehanSent: Monday, June 13, 2011 6:10 AMTo: Bonny ReinmuthSubject: RE: [Tessitura Development Forum] Dups - Name Data Merging?
Bonny,
If you want to handle the specific circumstance you mention, you will need to alter the local merge procedure. I have done so for our consortium so that the following will happen:
If the kept record has an N2, nothing happens. If the kept record does not have an N2 but the delete record does, I place the delete N2 on the kept record N2 prior to the merge.
We also add aliases in a manner similar to what Amanda describes.
Version 11 is Next Gen which will have a new merge program to accommodate the changes in the Constituent structure. So taking that change in account it is being addressed in that a record will no longer have a N1 and N2 but the individuals will belong to a single household record.
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Bonny Reinmuth Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 1:21 PM To: McKinley, Leslie Subject: RE: [Tessitura Development Forum] Dups - Name Data Merging?
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Sheehan Sent: Monday, June 13, 2011 6:10 AM To: Bonny Reinmuth Subject: RE: [Tessitura Development Forum] Dups - Name Data Merging?
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Hey all,
Bonny also emailed me directly (which I saw before this forum post) and I answered privately with pretty much the same information you’ve all done such a great job of providing here. So I just wanted to let you all know that I didn’t ignore Bonny, and say thanks for being such a great community!
Thanks everyone, for your suggestions. We will handle this manually until V11 is released.