Merging contacts in Influence is nice and easy, but is only possible if you are logged in as the ADM user or if your UserID (login) has been setup to 'Allow Contact Merge'.

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Merging Contacts

Examples

Merging Clients

Merging Candidates

Merging Contacts

It is possible to merge two or more Contact records:

1) Login as the administrator [ADM] user.

2) Make sure the contacts are listed under the same company.(If not you can open the contact record and use the Show Where [  ] option on a contact record to easily move them.)

3) Right click on the main contact for the merge and select Select Main Contact for merge

4) Right click on the contact record to merge and select Select Source contact 1 to merge

5) You can select up to 4 contacts to merge this way.

6) When you are happy right click on the first contact and hit Merge above Contacts

All the journals will get merged together and only 1 contact should now appear.

Example

The customer Big Ponds has two contacts for Nick Meadows

Whilst logged in as ADM 
i) Right-click on one of these contacts and set as 'Main' contact
ii) Right click on the second 'Nick Meadows' and set as Contact 1 for Merge

Finally, right-click and choose the option Merge Above Contacts. You will be prompted with an Are You Sure message, and if you say YES, then the contacts will be merged.

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Merging Clients

It is possible to MERGE two or more Client records with one becoming the 'master' and the others branches of that client.

Note: Before any merge or data change, it is good practice to ensure that you have a verified backup of your database. A good time to do this sort of exercise is first thing in the morning, before any other activity and changes have been made.

IMPORTANT: Merging clients will merge linked records such as journals, vacancies, matches etc. into the master record. Company data fields such as phone number, enquiry source etc. and note fields will be kept from the master record only.

How to:

1) Login as the administrator [ADM] user.

2) Run a new client (company) search from the [Searching] workbench, (i.e. not a simple list from the [Company] workbench.), by selecting [New] at the bottom left, and find the clients you wish to merge.

3) Place a tick in the 'Inc' column against each of the relevant records (including the Master record).

4) Right-click the name of the 'Master' record in the grid and choose Merge marked clients with selected client.

Please see the below visual - you can right-click on the image and 'open in new tab' to zoom in:

The system will then merge the selected records including journals into your specified Client.
e.g. 

Bristol Hospital	[Master]
Bath Infirmary	Tick
Outwood Patient Centre	Tick
Westley Nursing Practice	Tick

You would end up with ONE company on the system (Bristol Hospital) with several Branches within it (Bath Infirmary, Outwood Patient Centre, Westley Nursing Practice)

Branches can then be merged into a single site record in a similar means via a Branch/Site Search.

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Merging Candidates

It is possible to MERGE two Candidate records in the following way.  You may also like to know the different ways you can find duplicated candidates too, which would make managing your database a lot easier. 

1) Login as the administrator [ADM] user. (Or any user with the 'Merge Candidates' privilege)

2) Run a candidate search (ie use [Searching] and not just a simple list from the [Candidate] workbench) to find the two duplicate records.

3) Place a tick in the 'Inc' column against both records, and then make sure you select the one which you wish to become the 'Master' record.

4) Right-click the record in the grid, and choose "Merge marked candidate with selected candidate".

The system will then keep the details of the master record and merge linked records including journals, matches, bookings etc.
Text fields such as summary text will only be kept from the master record.

The merge will set the Status for 'marked' candidate (ie not the master) to 'DEL'.
Having finished the process you will end up with one candidate which has all the Matches/Journals/notes against it.

If you wish you can then go into the 'Old' candidate record which has the status of "DEL" and click the X at the top of the record to totally remove the duplicate record.

Worked Example of Merging a candidate:

Step 1: Go to [Searching] and start a new candidate search.

Step 2: Set the Status to "All" then search to find the candidates you want to merge (often Surname is a good idea)

Step 3: From the listed candidates, tick the [Inc] column at the right hand for those you want to merge, then right-click on whichever you want to keep as the Master and choose Merge Marked Candidates with selected Candidate

The system will then merge the records together according to the rules mentioned above.

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