Merged constituent records

Jennifer Chaiken
Jennifer Chaiken
Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
in SKY Developer General Discussions
Can someone help me understand exactly what happens when constituent records are merged? I have an integration with Blackbaud that imports constituents and gifts records and matches them (both manually and automatically) with users in our database. Recently I have noticed that some of the constituent records on Blackbaud have been merged and some of the the old records have been deleted. The associated gift records are showing up in Blackbaud as expected but it's causing a problem with the data matching on my side. It seems like the gift records are updated with the main constituent's id and the old constituent can then be deleted. Is this correct? I don't see a merge table in the API so I am wondering how Blackbaud keeps track of merged records.

Comments

  • Robert Jones
    Robert Jones
    Sixth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Hey Jennifer,


    I just attended a Blackbaud Webinar that gives a more detailed explanation of what happens when you merge duplicate constituent records. I'd be more than happy to forward you the link, as I believe it's very important when users make the decision to merge.


    RJ
  • Rob Gibbons
    Rob Gibbons
    Seventh Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1 bbcon 2022 Attendee
    Robert, would you share that link with us as well? We're working on an integration with HEP Data and our Alumni Association and this topic has come up a couple of times already.


    Thanks,

    Rob
  • Jennifer Chaiken
    Jennifer Chaiken
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Yes, please share the link. It would be very helpful to understand how the data flows.
  • Tracey Curran
    Tracey Curran
    Fifth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    I'd really appreciate sight of that as well Robert if you could share the link with me also.


    Thanks

    Tracey
  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper
    Robert - a link to the webinar itself would also be appreciated, if you can provide that. Thanks!


    Karen
  • Anthony Gallo
    Anthony Gallo Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Commented in Discussion First Reply
    Happy Monday Everyone,

    Below you will find the link to the webinar that just took place.
    Raiser's Edge NXT: Spring-Cleaning Your Database: Strategies for Duplicate Management

    Hopefully this helps!


    Anthony
  • Jennifer Chaiken
    Jennifer Chaiken
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1

    Hi Robert! I would love it if you could share the link on
    merging constituent records. Thank you! Jennifer
  • Robert Jones
    Robert Jones
    Sixth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Hello All,


    Sorry I am just now seeing the responses to this. It looks like Anthony has already posted the link to the webinar below. I can honestly say that it was a bit more detailed and broke down when you may want to use Merge Constituent Records in Web View vs. Database View (Something our team made some assumptions on based on the info we were given when we migrated over last year). If the user is not careful, they can and will break integrations attached to a record that was deleted. We haven't begun using SKY API yet, but am thankful for this thread, as this wasn't a specific issue we had even considered.


    For anyone that may have missed the link I'll repost it again here: Raiser's Edge NXT: Spring-Cleaning Your Database: Strategies for Duplicate Management
  • Tracey Curran
    Tracey Curran
    Fifth Anniversary Participant Facilitator 1
    Thanks both for posting the link that is really helpful.
  • Szymon Zaleski
    Szymon Zaleski
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
    It seems like duplicate merging works differently, whether you do it from the database view or the web view.

    Merging constituent records in the database view deletes the old constituent record from the database entirely.

    Merging them in the web view keeps the merged constituent in the database as Inactive without deleting them.

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