Full and Incremental Duplicate Search Processes

The full and incremental constituent search processes help you accurately and efficiently locate duplicate constituent records in your database. The full process searches the entire database for duplicates, while the incremental search compares only those records that were added or updated since the last search process was run. You can run both processes in different modes. The "fast process" and "detailed process" modes have pre-configured matching options, filters, and match confidence levels. The "custom" mode allows you to manually configure the matching options and filters and fine-tune the match confidence levels to best suit your needs. In most cases, we recommend that you use the fast or detailed process because custom settings can make the search processes take longer to run.

To identify duplicates, the constituent search processes leverage the soundex phonetic algorithm. This algorithm helps the system locate names that sound the same but have minor differences in spelling. These minor spelling differences coupled with other matching criteria like address, phone, and email are used to identify possible duplicate records. For a detailed explanation of the algorithm and matching calculations, see Full and Incremental Duplicate Search Algorithm.