Merge duplicate contacts
The same speaker created twice — once from an import, once from a form submission under a second email address — means two profiles, two portal logins and split history. Merging folds the duplicates into one primary contact and keeps everything they were attached to.
Why use it
Section titled “Why use it”Duplicates creep in from imports, forms and portal sign-ups. Merging keeps one clean record with the field values you choose, keeps the person’s sessions and history together, and keeps them to a single row on your team and speaker lists — one person, one login, one place to look.
Who can merge
Section titled “Who can merge”Duplicate detection and merging are part of Speaker CRM, or of the Unique Contacts add-on for organizations without the full CRM. Without either, a contact’s profile still shows how many potential duplicates were found, with a prompt to contact support to enable Unique Contacts.
How duplicates are found
Section titled “How duplicates are found”Sessionboard compares each contact to the rest of your organization’s contacts by name and by the part of the email address before the @, allowing for small spelling differences. So Ray Auer at a hospital address and Raymond Auer at a personal address are flagged; two people who share a surname are usually not. Contacts already merged are not suggested again.
Two contacts with exactly the same first and last name, or exactly the same email address, are always suggested to each other — from either contact’s profile, including contacts added a moment ago.
Review possible duplicates
Section titled “Review possible duplicates”CRM > Contacts > Review duplicates opens Possible duplicates: every suggestion in your organization, grouped by person. The header shows how many people are waiting for review and when contacts were last checked; Sessionboard re-checks every night, and Re-scan checks again now.
Each card compares the contacts side by side — email, organization, title, mobile phone, portal login, events and linked sessions — and highlights the rows where they differ. Why suggested names the rule and fields that matched, or who flagged the contacts and when. The contact with the most linked sessions (then a portal login, events and the latest update) is marked Suggested primary.
- Merge opens the merge steps below with that group selected and the suggested primary first.
- Not a duplicate dismisses the suggestion. A dismissed pair is never suggested again — not on the review page, not on the contact’s profile, not on the merge screen — even after contacts change or rules re-run. Each dismissal records who made it and when; the Dismissed tab lists them, and Undo brings a pair back.
In the Contacts directory, Possible duplicates filters the list to contacts with an open suggestion, and an icon marks them in the name column.
Mark contacts as possible duplicates
Section titled “Mark contacts as possible duplicates”Sessionboard can only suggest what its rules catch. When you know two records are the same person — different names, different addresses — select two to twenty contacts in the Contacts directory and choose Mark as possible duplicates, or use Mark as possible duplicate on a contact’s profile. They appear on Possible duplicates as Flagged by you, ready to merge or dismiss.
Duplicate rules
Section titled “Duplicate rules”By default, contacts whose first and last name are the same or similar are suggested.
Organizations on the Enterprise plan can set their own rules on the Rules tab of Possible duplicates. A rule combines up to five fields — first and last name, organization, email, mobile phone, or any text, email, phone, number or URL contact field such as a member ID — and every field in the rule must match:
- Exact — the same after ignoring case and extra spaces (phone numbers compare digits only).
- Similar — spelled almost the same; for email, the same part before the @; for phone numbers, the same last seven digits.
A pair is suggested when it matches any enabled rule. Enabled rules replace the default rule; turn them all off and the default applies again. Saving a rule re-checks your contacts in the background. Rules only decide what is suggested: they never merge contacts and never change which email identifies a contact.
- Open the contact’s profile — Edit at the left of their row in an event’s CRM > All Contacts, or from the organization’s CRM > Contacts directory. When Sessionboard has found potential duplicates, a banner at the top reads We found N potential duplicates of this contact. Click Merge Duplicates. (Ignore hides the banner for this visit.)
- Select Contacts. The table lists the potential duplicates with their Contact ID, name, email, portal username, events, Sessions (how many live sessions each record is on, a quick way to see which record holds the person’s work) and last update. The contact you opened is always in the list, so any of the records can be the primary. Tick the records to merge — two or three in total — and use Use as primary on the one that should survive. The search box narrows the suggested records by name, Contact ID or email; it does not search the whole directory. Click Next.
- Compare & Merge. Each field appears as a row with one column per contact; the primary’s values are pre-selected. Click a different value to keep it instead, and use Show differences to hide fields where all the records agree. Click Merge, then confirm — the dialog reminds you the non-primary contacts will disappear from your events.
A Contacts merged message confirms completion, and you land back on the primary contact’s profile.
What the merge keeps
Section titled “What the merge keeps”| From every merged contact | From the primary contact only |
|---|---|
| Event memberships — the primary is added to any event only a duplicate was in | Event-level field values (custom fields set per event) |
| Session roles: speaker, moderator, chairperson and custom roles such as co-author | Notes |
| Portal tasks and their completed status, files and follow-up forms | Additional contacts |
| Portal tasks, sessions and access move to one login — see Signing in after a merge | Field values you did not switch on the compare step |
| Email history: messages sent to a duplicate stay visible in the primary’s history |
The merge also shows up in the primary contact’s Activity feed.
Signing in after a merge
Section titled “Signing in after a merge”A merged contact keeps one password or sign-in-link login. It is the login whose address matches the Email you kept on Compare & Merge; if none matches, it is the login used most recently. The duplicates’ other logins lose access to the contact, so someone who keeps signing in with an old address sees an empty portal or You do not have access to the portal for this event.
- On Compare & Merge, keep the Email the person actually signs in with.
- After the merge, check Portal Username in the Details card of the primary’s profile.
- Tell the person to sign out and sign in again with that address. If it is the wrong one, use Portal options → Change Portal Username.
People who sign in with single sign-on
Section titled “People who sign in with single sign-on”A login linked to your identity provider is never retired by a merge. Single sign-on recognizes the person by their identity provider account, and the provider sends the same address every time, so that login keeps reaching the merged contact whichever Email you kept. When they go back to a submission form, their draft is saved on the merged contact, even if its email differs from the one the provider sends.
If someone who signs in through SSO still sees an empty portal, or a new duplicate of them appears after they sign in, don’t merge again yet. Email support@sessionboard.com with the primary contact’s Portal Username, the address your identity provider sends for them, and roughly when they signed in. See also the single sign-on questions.
Avoid the duplicate in the first place
Section titled “Avoid the duplicate in the first place”Most duplicates come from creating a new contact when one already existed under another address. Search first — see Adding existing contacts to a new event — and let imports match on email so they update rather than create (Importing data).