When mergeing contacts in a directory do the timelines merge? (and more questions!)

Question

Hi everyone,I've just started a position where I am managing an couple of online panels. The organization has a Directory and asked me to look into using it for panel management. Unfortunately no one every explored this feature before and so every time they created a distribution list for the panels all of those contacts were added to the Directory resulting in over 60K records with lots of duplicates. Some records have as many as 15 duplicates.  If I merge these duplicates will their timelines merge?Not only are there many duplicates, but email address (the identifying variable) is in the directory in 3 or 4 different variables. I want to merge the duplicates across these variables, or update email in the contact attribute with the email from another variable so I can merge. Is this possible?Many of the records do not have the needed embedded data and I would like to update that without having to enter it by hand into each record. Is there a way to upload new information to multiple contacts in a Directory?I would just wipe the Directory and start from scratch but I want the timeline data. Is it possible to download and upload timeline data? Thank you!

MatthewM · Accepted Answer

Regarding this question ("Many of the records do not have the needed embedded data and I would like to update that without having to enter it by hand into each record. Is there a way to upload new information to multiple contacts in a Directory?"), you could download the records you want to update, add the embedded data, and re-upload them. However, I know from experience with my own duplicate-laden Directory that this becomes problematic when duplicate records exist by email, first name, and last name together. So if you do that, you'll want to resolve the duplicate records as much as possible first.

Aanurag_QC · Answer

Merging the contacts using Qualtrics functionality would keep the latest updated values and would also keep all the records intact. It wont affect the responses and will appear as is on the timeline per Qualtrics document.Also, merging of contacts is only possible on contact fields and not on embedded fields. Hence, please note that if you're trying to merge using an embedded value, then that wont be possible.

Sign up

Login to the Community

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded