Facilitating removal of duplicate contacts

Purpose: display a link to the Merge Contacts Wizard from the search screen and from the contact screen

Too many times users search for a contact but end up creating a duplicate anyway.

Most of the time is because they use the first contact that appears and they leave blank the fields you configured in DupeCatcher.

What follows is a way that – hopefully – will make it easy for them to remember to avoid and remove duplicates.

Even if it doesn’t help with that, at least it will make it more convenient to merge duplicates by giving a link to the Merge Contacts Wizard from the search screen and from the contact screen.

1) Create a field named Merge Duplicates (Merge_Contact_URL__c) as Formula(Text) and enter the formula as:

HYPERLINK(‘/merge/conmergewizard.jsp?id=’ & AccountId & ‘&srch=’ & FirstName & ‘+’ & LastName, ‘Merge Duplicates’, ‘_blank’)

2) Enter Description as: Link for opening this contact in the Merge Contact Wizard

3) Enter Help Text as: Click this link if you want to find and merge duplicates for this contact

4) Then add to the Contact Search layout:

5) The convenient link will appear on your search results like this:

6) You can also create a custom button that allows the same function from the Contact itself:

7) Just remember to add the custom button to the page layout: