Preventing duplicate companies

About company duplication settings

The company duplication settings allows you to set similar text as equivalent, preventing the creation of duplicate company records.

For example, "Dept" and "Department" are set to be equivalent. ABC Information Systems Dept is being entered as a new company, but ABC Information Systems Department already exists in the system. Because Dept and Department are equivalent, the two companies have duplicate company names.

You can also eliminate words such as the, and, and of from the final company records. For example, you could set "University of," "Univ of," and "U of" all equivalent to "Univ".

If you set text equivalent to "", then Poetic checks for matches with and without that text. For example, if you set "University" equivalent to "", then Stanford and Stanford University would be considered duplicates.

Poetic removes spaces and ignores case. Do not include any punctuation in the text.

How Poetic controls company duplication

Poetic uses two Registry settings to determine how to find and whether to allow duplicate companies.

DUPLICATION_BOUNDARY is the boundary within which Poetic checks for duplicates. If set to WORLD, then all matching names are duplicates. If set to CITY_COUNTRY, then matching names are only duplicates if the companies are located in the same city and country. If set to STREET_CITY_COUNTRY, then matching names are only duplicates if the street address, city, and country all match.

When Poetic detects a duplicate, it then checks the ALLOW_COMPANY_NAME_DUPLICATION setting to determine whether duplicates are allowed.

• If ALLOW_COMPANY_NAME_DUPLICATION is set to False, then duplicate company names are not allowed. Poetic displays an error message indicating that the new company cannot be created because it is a duplicate.
• If ALLOW_COMPANY_NAME_DUPLICATION is True, then when Poetic detects a duplicate, the Duplicate Company page displays.

  Users can then choose whether to add the new company or to use an existing matching company.

Adding and removing duplication settings

To add and remove company duplication settings:

1. On the Administration menu, click Site maintenance.
2. On the Site Maintenance menu, click the Configuration tab.
3. On the Configuration tab, click Company duplication.

   The Company Duplication Settings page displays.

4. Click Add rows.

   New lines are added to the top of the list.

   To remove an extra line, click the Remove link for the line.

5. For each setting, in the Text field, type the abbreviation or word you want replaced.

   For example, to replace "dept" with "department", type "dept" in the Text field.

   Do not include any punctuation in the field.

6. In the Replace with field, enter the replacement for the abbreviation or word in the Text field.

   For example, to replace "dept" with "department", type "department" in the Replace field.

   Do not include any punctuation in the field.

7. To remove a duplication setting, click the Remove link for the setting.
8. Click Save.