Hello,
TFO recently upgraded to TNEW 7 and consequently activated Guest Checkout.
A member of out team checks all newly created records every week and a discovered an individual who already has a constituent record that created a new one with the "Guest Attribute". When we tried to merge the old record into the new guest record, it was flagged in the duplicate merge process and aborted because of the "TNEW Guest attribute set to yes for customer ______".
Are their recommended best practices for cleaning up the guest records and does the guest record always need to be merged into the older record? Does anyone know what happens to the email address and Guest Attribute flag during the merge?
Thanks!
Josh
Hi Josh - congratulations on your upgrade!
We do have recommendations on merging, and yes - the guest record would be merged into the standard (and presumably previous) account. The application blocks a merge into a guest record (as you discovered). The guest attribute is removed during the merge, the email address is kept. Note, however, that a customer may continue to checkout as a guest in the future, which would again make a new guest account. More from the TNEW documentation here:
Using the standard merge process, an organization may decide to merge constituent records used for guest checkout (i.e., a "delete" record) into a matching constituent record (i.e., a "keep" record). When this type of merge is processed, the guest record will be inactivated, and contact information, orders, and transaction history will be merged into the "keep" record. The guest login type and guest attribute will not carry over to the "keep" record.
If there is an attempt to merge into an existing guest record (containing the guest attribute), an error will occur and the merge process will not continue. The TNEW Guest Checkout attribute prevents the constituent record from being a "keep" record during a merge.
Tip: If a customer uses the same email address for both a standard account login (with password) and a guest checkout order, multiple records can appear in Tessitura as duplicates. You might still wish to keep these accounts separate, as customer history and contact information (including displayed shipping addresses) will be merged, and may be confusing to your customers. Alternatively, the guest record may match other non-login records in your database, and qualify as a duplicate based on postal address. You may wish to merge these accounts. Be sure to develop a consistent merge practice for your organization regarding guest checkout accounts.
Hope that helps!
Beth GillilandLearning Engineer