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Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Concept: Duplicate Files

Concept: Duplicate Files

Workday Contract Management and Document Intelligence identifies duplicate documents during the upload and AI processing pipeline to ensure data consistency and accurate document counts.
Example: When 2 files have the same content but different document properties, they are still considered duplicates.
Contract Management and Document Intelligence automatically links duplicates when you upload documents to provide these benefits:

Deduplication Logic

Workday bills for unique contracts, not duplicate files. Adding a duplicate doesn’t increase your total document count.
Example: When 2 files have the same content on a pixel-by-pixel basis, they are considered duplicates.
Example of documents that are treated as unique documents:
  • A Word (.docx) draft versus a final PDF version.
  • A document with 1 signature versus the same document with 2 signatures.
  • Files with different content but the same file name, location, or upload date.

AI Pipeline and Data Sets

Duplicate documents skip the AI processing pipeline. Instead, they inherit all data field values from the original document and point to one backend copy. Consequently, all documents in a duplicate set share exactly one set of data.

Automatic Linking

Contract Management and Document Intelligence automatically links duplicates when you upload documents to provide these benefits:
  • Simplified search results
    : Search results display unique documents only. When you select a document, you can view a pop-up modal displaying all copies across different folder paths or with different filenames.
  • Auto-propagate file updates
    : When you update a file, Contract Management and Document Intelligence applies your changes to all duplicate files automatically. Changes made to 1 duplicate file are reflected in the other files, regardless of the file names, file locations, or upload times. Changes to a file name or location don't affect duplicate files; they keep their own names and locations.
    If you manually change a field, it appears as
    manually
     changed across the entire set.
  • Easy-to-read export reports
    : When you export a list of contracts to Excel, Contract Management and Document Intelligence displays only 1 file in the output. This eliminates confusion by avoiding multiple file names for the same contract. You can include duplicates in the export if needed.

File Management

Because duplicates share a single data set, actions taken in the UI affect the entire group. Deleting a document directly from search results deletes all copies in the duplicate set. To reduce the number of duplicates without losing all copies, use the API to delete individual copies by their specific document ID.
We recommend you contact Customer Support for guidance before performing bulk deletions.