'Manage Duplicates' en masse

[Joe_J]

Hi,
I have a couple of questions regarding the 'Manage Duplicates' option within HubSpot.

• What properties do they use to define a duplicate contact, and can this be changed?
• We have some duplicates where it seems only based on name, which isn't accurate enough for us to rely on as being a true duplicate.
• If we merge 2 records, am I right in reading that it creates a third record with the merged data? Do the old 2 records remain or get archived/deleted?
• Is there a way to update duplicates en masse? We have ten's of thousands and to do each pair manually in HubSpot or to manually export, clean and re-import isn't viable.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joe_J,

Happy to help here:

• HubSpot looks at the properties listed here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/deduplication-of-records#manually-deduplicate-contacts-and-com...
• If you require additional deduplication criteria and don't want to get your hands dirty, you can get a lot more flexibility with third-party solutions like Koalify or Insycle.
• You can find the exact things that happen when two records are merged here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/merge-records#what-happens-when-i-merge-records
• Yes, see above.

Hope this helps!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @Joe_J,

Happy to help here:

• HubSpot looks at the properties listed here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/deduplication-of-records#manually-deduplicate-contacts-and-com...
• If you require additional deduplication criteria and don't want to get your hands dirty, you can get a lot more flexibility with third-party solutions like Koalify or Insycle.
• You can find the exact things that happen when two records are merged here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/merge-records#what-happens-when-i-merge-records
• Yes, see above.

Hope this helps!

[Jonas_De_Mets · Accepted solution]

Thanks for suggestion Koalify @karstenkoehler! 

@Joe_J, you are describing the exact problem I ran into, which is why we created Koalify. I’ve added our solutions inline:

• What properties do they use to define a duplicate contact, and can this be changed?
  -> You define the rules that determine how records are identified as duplicates:
  https://koalify.io/knowledge-base/how-to-create-custom-rules-to-identify-hubspot-duplicate
• We have some duplicates where it seems only based on name, which isn't accurate enough for us to rely on as being a true duplicate.
  -> Merge true duplicates in bulk & potential duplicates manually:
  https://koalify.io/blog/when-to-merge-hubspot-duplicates-in-bulk-versus-manually
• If we merge 2 records, am I right in reading that it creates a third record with the merged data? Do the old 2 records remain or get archived/deleted?
  -> That's correct
• Is there a way to update duplicates en masse? We have ten's of thousands and to do each pair manually in HubSpot or to manually export, clean and re-import isn't viable.
  -> That's possible with our workflow action: https://koalify.io/knowledge-base/how-to-bulk-merge-hubspot-duplicates-using-koalify-workflow-action...

Hope this helps!