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Item Deduplication Mechanisms Explained

For users of the Email Sidebar on:

5 min read

Due to the large amount of records processed in various data-handling scenarios through RG Email Sidebar by multiple users—and the potential for simultaneous record updates directly in Salesforce—deduplication mechanisms are necessary to maintain organized data. This article explains how these mechanisms work.

Allow creating email duplicates in Salesforce

Salesforce has a limitation with WhoId linking: any Activity can only be linked to one object. To link a Task or Email Message from your email correspondence to multiple objects, the RG Email Sidebar creates duplicates (clones) in Salesforce. This is the default behavior and is preferred by most users.

This behavior is managed by the Allow creating email duplicates in Salesforce setting, which is enabled by default. The setting is located in the Application settings section of the Sidebar Customization.

If the Allow creating email duplicates in Salesforce setting is enabled, the Sidebar can create duplicate records for linking Emails or Tasks to multiple objects.

If you disable this setting:

  • Linking emails to multiple objects will no longer be possible.
  • If an email linked to one object is re-linked to another, the first object will be unlinked.
  • You will receive a prompt when attempting to re-link an email to a new object, asking you to replace the current value in the Name field with the new object name.

For example, if an email is initially linked to a Contact and you attempt to link it to a Lead (e.g., “Robert West”), the following notification will appear:

Customizing duplicate creation for specific object types

Instead of disabling duplicate creation entirely, you can limit it to specific object types. This reduces the number of duplicates in Salesforce while retaining the ability to link emails to multiple objects. The maximum number of duplicates per email is 10.

To set up duplicate creation for specific object types:

  1. Open the Customization page.
  2. In the Application settings section, ensure the Allow creating email duplicates in Salesforce checkbox is selected.
  3. Open the Allow creating email duplicates to be linked to these object types menu and select the desired object types.

Note

If this field is left empty, RG Email Sidebar will create duplicates for all Salesforce object types.

  1. Click Save to apply the changes, then refresh the Sidebar.

By managing this setting, you can optimize how RG Email Sidebar handles email duplicates, ensuring your data remains well-organized and aligned with your Salesforce workflows.

General email deduplication

The Allow creating duplicated emails in Salesforce feature is not to be confused with general Email deduplication always automatically applied by Revenue Grid synchronization when email business correspondence is processed and saved in Salesforce. General deduplication prevents creation of redundant clones of the same email by several users within a Salesforce Org. After a user in an Org sends or receives an email and saves it in Salesforce, another user from the same Org who receives the message will see an indication that the email has already been saved in Salesforce in the header of RG Email Sidebar upon selecting it in the email client:

For example, if an email is received by several users one Org (via the To: or CC: field) and all of them save the email in Salesforce via RG Email Sidebar, only the first instance will be saved and the rest will be referenced to the first one.

The email’s current object associations (linking) set by the first user who saved it in Salesforce will be marked in the Sidebar with green checkmark circles. If you modify these associations and save the email in Salesforce, RG Email Sidebar will create a clone of the corresponding Task/Email Message object that will be linked according to your preferences, also keeping its initial instance with its original linking for other users in your Org.

Emails Deduplication setup precondition

When users save emails using the Save button in RG Email Sidebar, the deduplication always functions and does not require any additional configuration.

However, if you want deduplication to be applied when emails are saved by RG Sync Engine, you should enable the deduplication.

To enable general deduplication a custom InternetMessageId field (it is included in the Revenue Grid managed Salesforce package) should be added in Salesforce for Task and Email Messages Email Messages and specified in RG Email Sidebar Admin panel setting Original email ID.

Contacts, Events, and Tasks deduplication

Besides preventing Email duplicates creation, RG Email Sidebar ensures that no duplicated Contacts or Events are created in your Salesforce Org. This deduplication is handled by synchronization.

Contacts duplication is based on the Email address field: instead of creating a new instance of a Contact with the same email address on Contacts syncing RG Email Sidebar retrieves the existing one from Salesforce.

Events deduplication is applied based on their Subject, Start Date, and Organizer fields matching; it only concerns Salesforce Events which have attendees (meetings/conference calls). Additional rule applied: if the same event is created or updated in MS Outlook and Salesforce at the same time, only the instance created/updated in MS Outlook will be kept, the other instance will be replaced.

Tasks deduplication is applied based on their Subject, Due Date, and Owner fields matching.

Advanced Events deduplication

RG Email Sidebar also has an an advanced Events deduplication mechanism. See this article to learn the preconditions for enabling it.
Advanced deduplication implies that on calendar items syncing the Sync engine checks for possible existing duplicates based on Salesforce ClientGuid value instead of the default way, where natural keys (the Event’s Subject and Time values) are used. This enhances deduplication precision.

RG Email Sidebar enables this mechanism automatically as soon as this field is configured for Salesforce Event objects.

The Client GUID field in Salesforce Event object:

Existing record duplicates merging with conflicts resolution

RG Email Sidebar also includes a duplicate records merging feature based on Salesforce contacts / accounts merging mechanism. It is triggered when one or several users in the same Salesforce Org create a lead, contact, or account based on the same email address; it allows selecting a single preferred option between the non-matching values in record fields (conflicts resolution). After you mark the preferred values and click Merge the second instance of the record will be deleted from Salesforce and its associated items will be relinked to the resulting correct instance.