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Abraham kumar 4Abraham kumar 4 

External ID field to avoid Duplicate Records

Hi All,

Now I have contact records coming in from an external system into salesforce but when the contact is created in salesforce the Account which is a Lookup is creating duplicate values and not linked with the existing account, can anyone please let me know if an external id field can help resolve this issue?.
and like how the external id field identify the external system id and map it with SF id? Im not sure on how this works can anyone please shed some light?.

Please help.

Many Thanks
Abraham
Best Answer chosen by Abraham kumar 4
Amit Chaudhary 8Amit Chaudhary 8
Right.

In that case detail will be like below
Account Name :- XYZ
External ID = ABC123
SDFC ID :- Any 18 digit.

But your case you need to work on external id only not on the salesforce id

 

All Answers

Amit Chaudhary 8Amit Chaudhary 8
Hi Abraham kumar 4,

Yes you can do that with external id,

What is an external ID?
When importing custom objects, solutions, or person accounts, you can use external IDs to prevent duplicate records from being created as a result of the import operation.
An external ID is a custom field that has the “External ID” attribute, meaning that it contains unique record identifiers from a system outside of Salesforce. When you select this option, the import wizard will detect existing records in Salesforce that have the same external ID. Note that this operation is not case-sensitive - for example, “ABC” will be matched with “abc”. However, there is an exception: if the custom field has the separate “Unique” attribute and the case-sensitive option for that attribute is selected, uppercase and lowercase letters will not be considered identical.

Please check below blog for more information on same. For step by step process 
http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/05/07/using-exernal-id-fields-in-salesforce/

Please let us know if this will help you

Thanks
Amit Chaudhary
Abraham kumar 4Abraham kumar 4
Hi Amit,

Thanks for your quick response in this,

The main concern im having is suppose an external system has For example :- an Acount XYZ which has an Acount id as ABC123 now shall i tell the external system to map the account id ABC123 to the salesforce external id field if this is done then how comes ABC123 matches with the corresponding account in salesforce which has some 15 or 18 digit id .

Hope im clear. many thanks in advance
Abraham
Amit Chaudhary 8Amit Chaudhary 8
Hi Abraham,

You need to create new custom External ID field. Forget about salesforce 15 or 18 digit ID field.
External ID field will compare with ABC123  value only not with salesforce id.
Please check below blog for more information
http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/05/07/using-exernal-id-fields-in-salesforce/

Thanks
Amit Chaudhary
Abraham kumar 4Abraham kumar 4
Ok so... ABC123 comes to the external id field as ABC123 and the corresponding name of this account which is XYZ is searched in salesforce and mapped ... am i right Amit...

Thanks
Abraham
Amit Chaudhary 8Amit Chaudhary 8
Right.

In that case detail will be like below
Account Name :- XYZ
External ID = ABC123
SDFC ID :- Any 18 digit.

But your case you need to work on external id only not on the salesforce id

 
This was selected as the best answer
Abraham kumar 4Abraham kumar 4
Many Thanks Amit..