When you add a new name record Denari does a duplicate check to try to determine if the record you are adding is a potential duplicate of an existing name record. It does the same when a record is added by a donor through your Online Community page. However, the duplicate process is not full proof. There are many circumstances where Denari won’t be able to catch a true duplicate record. For example, if you have an existing record with a last name of St. James spelled S T period and someone enters the name again spelled S T and no period, Denari will not see a match in the last name field.
Or, you may have a situation where a husband and wife want two separate name records. They have the same last name, same street and same zip. But they are not duplicates. Frequently, a child living with the parents who are already donors could make a donation on their own. Again, same last name, same street and zip but not a duplicate. And there a lots of other examples as well. The dup check is not a perfect process.
You can change the criteria that Denari uses to check for duplicates by going to the Gear icon and then Setup. If you check a box here Denari will no longer use the default criteria and will use your combinations. There is an OR operator between these. For example, if you check the Email box and also check the Phone box Denari will flag the record as a potential duplicate if either the Email matches or the Phone matches.
The Duplicate Report is a tool that you can use to identify some of the duplicate name records already in your data and then clean them up as needed. It too is not a completely fool proof process but it will help you keep your data trim and clean.
Click on the Reports link on the left then Miscellaneous and finally Duplicate Report.
This part is pretty simple. Click the 'Run Potential Duplicates Report' button at the top right of the page. Denari will apply a basic criteria to look for duplicates. If it finds a match it will put those records on the report and put the report in the In Box.
No doubt you've noticed the Target Date field. This is only needed if you have a very large number of duplicates. It can help you narrow down the list to make it more manageable. When you enter a date Denari will only look for duplicates in name records that have an Introduction date earlier than that date. So you could, for example, look for duplicates in names that were entered more than five years ago. If you don't enter a date Denari will look at all of your name records. Most of the time you will not need a date here.
Below is a cross section of a duplicate report. Notice how Denari groups the records it thinks might be duplicates by color. (Scroll) We see two records that Denari thinks might be duplicates. It offers a clue as to why Denari thinks they are duplicates in the header at the top. In this case, it sees the Last Name, Zip, and Street as possible duplicates. Its now up to us to determine if they are really duplicates or not. We can examine the two records to see what matches and then we can make a decision to merge them or not.
 Keep This OneThis is pretty straightforward. If we have decided to merge these two records we simply select the one we want to keep here.
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 Merge TheseThis field is not as intuitive until you understand what it is trying to do. This field requires that you select a record by actually clicking on it. A very common mistake made is that users assume that they have selected the record to keep; so Denari should know which one to merge. But here's why that field works the way it does.
Sometimes Denari finds more than two records that might be duplicates. If you have several people living in the same household, for example, they will all have the same address and possibly the same last name. In the 'Merge These' field we might see four options, not two. By clicking on the first one that we want to merge; then holding down the control key on your keyboard, then clicking on the second record we've highlighted two records. Now when we run the Merge, Denari will merge all the records into one. So even if there are only two records you will still need to select the one you want to merge. That gives you control over which records to merge.
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 MergeWhen you click the Merge button Denari will merge together the gifts, pledges, classifications, contact records, and emails into the record you've chosen to keep. It will, of course, keep the address, phone number, and email fields that are in the record you are keeping.
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 Don't Check for DupsIf you don't want to merge them? The could be a situation where a child is living in the same house with their parents and there is a legitimate reason why this person should have their own name record in your data. In that case we can move to the 'Don't Check For Dups Again' field. Select the records that we want to remove from the process. Again, we can select more than one by holding down the Control key. Now click the 'Mark For No Dup' button. This page won't update automatically because it is a static page but the next time you run the report Denari will not include these records in the dup check process. In that way, they won't keep showing up on the report each time it is run.
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Once you have finished you can simply close the report window to complete the process. Running this occasionally will help you keep your data somewhat free of duplicates.
