Merging Records
Investigative cases can involve a large number of parties who might be unknown or only partially known at the outset, therefore causing a large number of records to be created with a minimum amount of information.
When you later discover that various identities available in the form of different records actually all describe one individual or organization you can use data cleansing to compare and merge the relevant records.
Example
In one case a person P1 is unknown and just has a rough description, profile, and a number of relationships. However, another person P2, who has been identified, is assigned to another case. After further investigation on the first case, a detective discovers that P1 is identical to P2. The information recorded for P1 and P2 belong to the same person and should therefore be merged. This means retaining P2's first name, last name, and address, and adding the description, profile, and relationships from P1.
Integration
The function used to merge records reuses the standard data cleansing functionality available for business partners.
Prerequisites
See the prerequisites for cleansing cases and duplicate check as described in the standard documentation for cleansing cases. For more information, see Data Cleansing.
Features
To perform data cleansing, you create data cleansing cases in which you compare two or more records, merge the relevant data, and then archive the records that are no longer required, thus removing redundant records.
You can create cleansing cases from two points:
From the search result list for persons and organizations, where you select the relevant records and create a cleansing case directly.
When creating or editing a record, a dialog box appears when a potential duplicate is identified (if the duplicate check is activated).
You can access cleansing cases that have been created from the Search: Cleansing Cases
page.
Note
Only the data provided as standard in cleansing cases is available for selection. This means that you have to merge certain data manually before you process the cleansing case:
Reassign relationships
Reassign descriptions, profiles, bank accounts, and payment cards
Transfer names to the
Other Names
assignment blockMove notes and attachments, including images, to the new master record