Merge contacts

Pour :Administrateur

View of the 'merge contacts' page

The merge consolidates two contact profiles into one. It is used to eliminate a duplicate in your base — for example, two "David Cohen" profiles created separately, one by a Google import and the other by an online payment, which actually designate the same person.

Without merging, this person's payments, pledges and subscriptions would be scattered across two profiles, their tax receipts would be incomplete, and your statistics wrong. With merging, everything is consolidated on a single profile, the complete history is restored and the duplicate disappears.

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Irreversible action

The merge cannot be undone. Once validated, the source profile permanently disappears and everything it contained is transferred to the master contact. Before clicking Validate, check twice that you are merging the right profiles.

Understand the roles: source and master

The merge always involves two contacts:

• the source profile — the one you open and from which you trigger the merge. It disappears at the end of the operation.
• the master profile — the one you choose in the modal. It survives and inherits the source's data.

The modal title is explicit: "WILL BE OVERWRITTEN BY" — the profile displayed at the top (the source) will be overwritten by the profile you choose below (the master).

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Choose the right master

The master must be the profile that contains the most reliable information, or the one you usually consult, or the one linked to the right family. The master keeps its identifier and external links; the source disappears with its own.

Launch a merge

1. 1

   Open the source profile

   Locate one of the two duplicates in the catalog (/app/contact/catalogue) and open its profile. It is this profile that will be deleted at the end of the operation.

2. 2

   Click on the Merge action

   In the profile's action menu (usually a ⋮ menu or a dedicated button), click on Merge. The Merge contacts modal opens.

3. 3

   Choose the master contact

   At the top of the modal, the source contact's name is displayed. Below, a dropdown list offers all the other contacts in your base. Type the searched name to filter the list; select the master contact.

4. 4

   Read the caution alert

   The alert displayed at the bottom of the modal reminds: "The contact's information will be overwritten by the new chosen contact (this action is irreversible)." Take 5 seconds to reread.

5. 5

   Validate

   Click on Validate. Unisoft proceeds with the merge; you are redirected to the master contact's profile, which now contains all the combined data.

What is transferred

The merge transfers everything that was attached to the source profile to the master profile:

Element	Behavior on merge
Payments	All payments from the source are attached to the master
Subscriptions	Recurring payments move to the master profile
Donation pledges	All pledges, collected or not, are transferred
Appointments and calendar events	Participation is kept on the master profile
Submitted forms	All submissions are attributed to the master
Families	If the source was head of a family, the master becomes head in their place
Categories	The categories of both profiles are merged (union)
Contact details (phone, email, addresses)	Everything is added to the master profile; the source's contact details become secondary if the master already had any
Family links	The links of both profiles are merged on the master
Custom fields	The fields of both profiles coexist; in case of conflict (same key), the master's value prevails
Interactions / comments	The entire timeline is consolidated on the master profile
Documents and attached links	All transferred to the master

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Server-side traceability

On the server side, the operation is logged in a dedicated technical collection (contact_merge_log): we keep track of which profiles were merged, when, and by whom. This allows the Unisoft technical team to roll back an erroneous merge in very exceptional cases, but this is not a public undo feature.

What disappears

The source profile entirely disappears from your base. Concretely:

• The unique identifier of the source profile no longer exists. If an external URL (a link in an email sent six months ago, for example) pointed to this profile, this link will be dead.
• The last name and first name of the source will no longer be displayed anywhere: everything is replaced by those of the master.
• The textual values specific to the source that are not in a list (such as notes or a profile comment) are not transferred if the master already has its own value.

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Check the master profile after merging

Just after merging, quietly open the master's profile and check that the information is correct: email, phone, address, family, categories. If information from the source has accidentally overwritten more accurate data of the master, this is the time to correct manually.

Typical duplicate cases

The most frequent duplicates come from:

Cause	Example
Duplicate import	You imported the same CSV twice by mistake
Google contacts sync	A contact created in backoffice + a Google sync bring back two profiles for the same person
Anonymous online payment	A congregant pays on the public page with an email different from the one you know: new profile created
Multi-team entry	Two team members create a profile for the same new person
Spelling variants	"Lévy" and "Levy" (without accent), "Cohen" and "Cohén"

The catalog search filter helps you spot these duplicates: search by phone, by email, or by name only, and see if two profiles come out. If so, merge them.

If you merge by mistake

Since the action is irreversible, there is no "Undo merge" button. Three avenues in case of problem:

1. Manually recreate the disappeared profile from the information you remember, and manually move the affected payments (very tedious). To avoid.
2. Contact Unisoft support in the hours following the merge: the server log may allow, in certain cases, to roll back the merge. This is not guaranteed and is an exceptional operation.
3. Learn from the case and establish a team rule: "before clicking Validate on a merge, the operator takes a screenshot of the modal". This allows at minimum to keep a trace of what was done.

Best practices

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Do a regular deduplication pass

Every week (or every month), take 15 minutes to scan your catalog for duplicates: sort by name, by phone, by email. It's a modest investment that maintains the quality of your base.

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Always check that they are the same people

Two contacts with the same name are not necessarily duplicates. "Sarah Cohen" can be two different people — the mother and her daughter, two women married to the same Cohen but unrelated… Before merging, check contact details, age, history: if you have the slightest doubt, ask the person concerned or a relative for confirmation.

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Prefer to merge towards the most used contact

If a profile is the "official" one (the one everyone knows, the one with the identifier published on a letter) and the other is the accidental one, merge keeping the official as master. To do this, open the accidental profile as source and choose the official as master in the modal.

Articulation with other tools

• To avoid duplicates at creation, be vigilant during bulk imports: use deduplication by email or phone.
• The advanced search lets you build targeted queries to spot potential duplicates (same phone, same email, similar names).
• If you manage many families, the Families view facilitates the detection of duplicate profiles in the same household.