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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Concept: Duplicate Management

Concept: Duplicate Management

The Duplicate Management Framework enables you to identify and remove duplicate records for the same person in Workday. A person with multiple person types, such as pre-hire, candidate, contingent worker, has multiple records in Workday. Configurable match rules enable you to find duplicate person records based on your match criteria. You can then review the duplicate records and merge them into a single record or remove the redundant ones.
The Duplicate Management Framework supports HCM, Workday Recruiting, and Workday Student. You can configure match and merge rules to accommodate person types specific to those functional areas.
Workday identifies duplicate records as:
  • Source: The records that you want to merge.
  • Target: The record into which you want to merge the source.
Before merging source and target records, Workday compares their data values. When the values match, Workday considers the records functionally equivalent. After the merge, Workday no longer displays data from the source record and you can no longer act on the source person except to unmerge the records.

Automatic Merge

Workday enables you to merge duplicate records automatically when:
  • You can manually merge the match record because there are no reasons to prevent the merge.
  • Neither person has a person type excluded from automatic merge on the
    Manage Match Rules
    task.
  • The persons match on a match rule with the
    Automatic Merge Enabled
    check box selected on the
    Manage Match Rules
    task.
  • The persons who match on a match rule with
    Automatic Merge Enabled
    on the
    Manage Match Rules
    task are a 1-to-1 match. They match exactly to each other and to no one else.
When the records don't meet all match criteria, Workday doesn't automatically merge them. The records remain available for manual merge.
Automatic merge depends on the completion of the process that finds duplicate records. This ensures that all 1-to-1 matches are found. When the process completes, Workday starts the automatic merge process and attempts to merge all duplicate records in the tenant until it reaches the limit of 10,000 records. When there are more than 10,000 duplicate records, Workday processes them after the completion of the next process that finds duplicate records. When all duplicate records are processed for automatic merge, another automatic merge process starts and attempts to merge any records that were previously processed.

Prevented Merges

Workday prevents merges of some combinations of person types, and any merge that could change data incorrectly. For merges with employee or contingent worker person types as the target, you can:
  • Append data from the source that doesn't match the target.
  • Leave data on the source.
Workday retains all existing personal information on employees and contingent workers, and doesn't modify or delete it.