Merge Behavior

In general, merge tasks compare source constituent records to target constituent records. If the source includes data that the target does not, the merge task associates the data with target and removes it from the source. Otherwise, the merge task does not change either record.

However, some merge tasks follow additional rules or allow you to edit the behavior. For records with primary indicators, such as addresses and education history, the merge tasks allow you to select whether to keep the primary indicator from the source target.

When merge tasks encounter duplicate records, they can handle them according to program constraints on duplicate records, allow you to keep the source or target constituent’s record, or allow you to exclude duplicate records. How a merge task handles duplicate records depends on the type of data it processes. For example, the program allows duplicate address records but does not allow duplicate registrant records for an event.

Records with date ranges can create situations where source and target records have dates that overlap. For example, constituency records have start and end dates. In many cases, the program does not allow these dates to overlap. When this happens, merge tasks defer to one record and determine the record that remains active for the constituent.

After you run a merge task, data can remain on source constituent records. On the merge process, you can select Delete source constituent to remove source constituents after the merge task. This removes the source constituent records and any information that was not removed from the source during the merge tasks.