This is a quick tip to help you create your first duplicate detection rule in Dynamics365 for Customer Engagement.

First navigate to Settings->Data Management->Duplicate Detection Rule

You have already some default duplication detection rules that you can use or unpublish. It is important to know that a duplication detection rule works only if it’s published and that you can have up to 5 maximum rules per entity.

Let’s create a simple duplication detection rule on Contact entity Mobile phone field, so when you create or update a contact with the same mobile phone number of another contact it will generate an alert. Click New to create a new rule.

Note that you have several options such as excluding inactive matching contact records and the ability to choose whether you want a case-sensitive rule or not by checking the corresponding box. You can also choose to ignore blank values.

Choose a field and a criteria (I took Exact Match) then save and do not forget to publish (buttons are at the top of the window).

Let’s now test our published new duplication detection rule, I’ll create a contact test1 with 07123456 as a mobile phone number then I’ll try to create a second one test2 with the same mobile phone.

When trying to save my contact2 record I get the following popup which means that the duplication detection rule has been triggered

You can choose to Ignore and Save so in this case contact 2 is saved with the same value in mobile phone number field as contact 1, otherwise you can cancel and get back to the record and update it with a different mobile phone number.