Remember when you were a small child, and you got to open all those wonderful presents that Santa (your parents) had left you? Do you also remember that sense of melancholy when all the presents were opened? Finally (yes, I’m getting to the point) do you remember finding one more present underneath all that shredded wrapping paper, and it turned out to be the one you loved most, because you it had been overlooked?

Well we have such a present in Spring ’15. Look under all the shredded paper at Setup/Data.com Administration/Duplicate Management. This is something that we have been longing for for years; native duplicate prevention in salesforce. Now this won’t help your Org that has existing duplicates – you need to work that one out with an App. But going forward, this is going to keep the weeds out of your garden.

First, you create matching rules, which set the criteria for salesforce determining if a duplicate exists. Of massive importance, this can be cross-object!! In other words, you can create matching rules that ensure that any new Lead is not already a Contact in salesforce, or vice-versa!!

After you create matching rules, you create Duplicate Rules, associate a Matching Rule with it, and this then determines what you want salesforce to do when a duplicate is suspected – block the record from being created or edited, or warn the user.

This is really powerful stuff. Use this new tool to keep your garden from having weeds and pests!!