When your company first onboards with Repfabric, all your contacts must be connected to a company.  Contacts not connected to a company are considered “orphans.”  This tutorial will explain when duplicates and orphaned contacts are allowed, and how to resolve duplicate contacts within the same company.

Scenario 1

Each contact must be unique in name.  For example, below, all three versions of the name below correspond to one contact or individual.  This individual works for the same company, so we know they are the same person. This is automatically allowed since each name is different and unique; even though it is the same person or contact. If you have 2 Jane Does, that work for the same company, you will have to change one of the names slightly.

You will notice that the first name is slightly different, but the e-mail address for each is the same.  If it is the case that all three contacts are variations of the same person, you will want to resolve these duplicate contacts by merging them (discussed in scenario 3).      

Scenario 2

What about contacts that don’t belong to a company right now? i.e. someone is leaving one company and looking for a job in the industry, so we want to retain her contact information.    

If that is the case, there is a solution, called “orphaning contacts.” You may do so via the following steps:

  1. Select the contact you would like to orphan:

2. Click the red X next to the “Company” field.

3. Click “yes” to confirm.

4. *****Click “Save” in top left corner or your changes will not be saved!

If you now go back to search on the contacts page for that contact, you will notice that there is no company associated with it:

Scenario 3

So, what do I do if I have the same contact or person in one company, multiple times, with different name variations?  How can I correct that?

The answer is: by merging duplicate contacts!  Below are the steps on how to do that:

  1. Locate the contact you want to get rid of. *Notice that one Boris does not have an email address. We had to add the “B” or it would have been flagged as a duplicate, and would not have been allowed.

2. Open the contact and click “Merge To” button in top right corner.

3. You will get to choose from a list of other contacts at the same company. Select desired contact.

Repeat this process as many times as you need to.