Perfect & Merge FAQ

DQ Perfect & Merge™ is a data cleansing tool (plug-in) which works inside Dynamics 365 to ensure the data in your CRM system is duplicate free. It allows you to review two or more duplicate records side by side and then create a surviving “Golden Record” using Perfect & Merge™ with ease.

DQ Perfect & Merge™ can cross compare records from Lead entities to account or contact entities. This allows for a complete and accurate Single Record View to be created.

Perfect & Merge™ is straight forward to set up and we can usually have you up and running within a couple of hours.

DQ Perfect & Merge™ allows users to fully automate the following steps:

• Matching
• Best Record Detection
• Best Field Detection
• Merging

This allows users to save time and money.

DQ Perfect & Merge™ is installed by running one executable. Once installed, DQ Perfect & Merge™ will appear as a plug-in with your CRM application. See our installation guide for more information.

Your data remains secure in your CRM system.  Our Managed Plug-in securely sends Phonetic match tokens via SSL to our Perfect & Merge™ Servers when Online or IFD.

Perfect & Merge™ is licensed on an annual license basis.  It’s price scales depending on the number of records you hold in your CRM system.

• • More than two records can be reviewed at the same time for manual review
  • Multiple data stewards can review, defer and re-assign reviewer ownership
  • Master (Best or Golden) records are created and maintained manually or by rules
  • The Master record from any duplicate set can be promoted manually. Or, through configurable rules, each duplicate group or all duplicate groups.
  • The Master records fields can be auto-filled using configurable rules manually. Or, through configurable rules, each duplicate group or all duplicate groups
  • Auto-merge of records can be configured to avoid reviewing of identical duplicates
  • Ease of use – Pre-defined templates and wizards help the user define sessions with ease
  • Control – Flexibility in matching, reviewing and processing puts the user in control
  • Speed – Matching and reviewing is fast and can be automated for speed
  • Security – Data remains in your system for security
  • Powerful – Advanced matching, review and Master record Merge (MRM) Rules ensure that P&M compared to the out-of-the-box duplicate detection is much more powerful

Perfect & Merge works with all deployments, Dynamics 365 Online, On-Premise and IFD.

Note: For On-Premise installations our Perfect & Merge™ Web Services application will need installation.

DQ Perfect & Merge™ can process large amounts of data. It has the ability to process millions of CRM entity records.

Yes, we can provide a trial of Perfect & Merge™ where you can test it’s functionality before you purchase. Please contact us if you would like a live demonstration of the DQ Perfect & Merge™ tool or you would like to “try before you buy”.  We allow up to 5 match sessions and you can review 10 duplicate groups using the trial version.

Perfect & Merge™ uses a drag and drop interface and a session set-up wizard which will be familiar to Dynamics 365 users, however, if required we can provide training.  We recommend a 4 hour online training session to get you up and running, normally broken up into 2 x 2 hour sessions. After this we are always here to help and support.

You open the Perfect & Merge™ tool within your CRM application and use the drag & drop to perfect the master record. Please see the User Guide for more information.

The DQ Perfect & Merge™ tool is fully optimized using the latest technologies and will perform very fast.  Specifics of performance depend upon, internet speed, the number of fields being processed, the rules applied to those fields etc.  As such, we encourage you to take a trial and try before you buy.

Currently, DQ Perfect & Merge™ is only integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM versions from 2013 and above.

We are keen to make sure your user experience is a good one. Annual License fees includes full support for the software. You can email us on support@dqglobal.com or call us directly, we are committed to resolving your issues or queries as soon as possible.

Yes, we provide a range of capabilities to help with fuzzy matching of records, including:

• Homonyms, Synonyms & Aliases
• Pre-built data transformations in 13 data categories and 5 spoken languages
• Phonetic algorithms in 5 spoken languages
• Deterministic and/or Probabilistic matching

Yes, you choose the scoring and weighting thresholds to determine when a record is identified as a duplicate.

You can define configurable rules from our – ever expanding – list, to determine how values from duplicates will auto-fill any Single Field, or Field Group to perfect your chosen “Best Record”.

You can define from our – ever expanding – list of rules to identify your “Best Record” from any group of duplicates.

Yes, auto-merging of identical records is possible.  You select the Entity fields you wish to be compared and Perfect & Merge™ will save you time reviewing identical records.

Referential integrity is maintained because we make all of our merge calls through the CRM SDK to ensure all linked data is correctly re-assigned from any duplicate record to the surviving “Master” record.

Duplicate records are queued until our Merge Service Runs, at which time, all duplicate records are de-activated and any data linked to a duplicate is moved from the surviving Master (Best) Record.

Yes, you can create multiple user accounts in Perfect & Merge™ and assign data stewards’ permissions as administrators or reviewers.  Administrators are able to create sessions and edit them; Reviewers are only able to review sessions.

Perfect & Merge™ has the ability to match data in 5 spoken languages: English, German, French, Italian and Spanish.

Data transformations and Phonetic rules are available in all languages.

Yes, you can use your Personal or system views from CRM to select which records you wish to process for matching.

Yes, you can use popular phonetic algorithms like: Soundex and Metaphone; or you can use our advanced Phonetic algorithms: DQ Fonetix™, DQ Metaphone™, DQ Soundex™ for significantly better match results.

Yes, it is possible to sub set a supplicate group.  This can be helpful if you find more than three duplicates, and there are two or more duplicate groups you wish to split into sub groups.

We do not provide an ability to export a report, however, Perfect & Merge shows a summary of results in the Match Session review screen.

There is a comprehensive library of pre-built data transformations.  These cover 13 data categories and 5 spoken languages.

You can even build your own if you wish and use them in Perfect & Merge™.

You can set up rules for: Auto-Promote, Auto-Accept, Auto-Fill and Auto-Merge and save reviewing and processing times.

Yes, any custom fields will be displayed and can be used in any match session.

You can access the documentation by clicking the question mark in the top right corner of your Perfect & Merge™ screen.

When you use Perfect & Merge™  no data leaves the CRM systems which means your data is not at risk.

Yes, any non-duplicates can be suppressed either permanently or for the specific session being reviewed.  Any record permanently suppressed record will not re-appear in a future match session unless it is newly found against another different record.

Yes, Perfect & Merge™ links directly to the CRM database using the Dynamics CRM SDK to read write and merge records in the CRM database. There is categorically no need to export your data and send it off site, your Data remains secure in your CRM system.

Reading of Data from CRM

• Data is retrieved from our hosted secured Server through service call with https connectivity.
• RetrieveMultiple Method is used to retrieve Database. (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-in/library/microsoft.xrm.sdk.iorganizationservice.retrievemultiple.aspx)

Storing retrieved data into a temporary Database

• To processing data into our Match engine we need to store data in temporary Database.
• The database is password protected
• The field values are Encrypted
• Once fed to the Match engine, the temporary Database is deleted

Data disposal

• Except for the above temporary encrypted data store, any data is retrieved from live for review, using the UniqueId (GUID) and then disposed

Passing data to Match engine

• Data from the temporary database is processed by the Match engine,
• Once used, the temporary Database is deleted
• Only the Matching record Unique Id’s (GUID’s) are permanently stored in a results list database for subsequent processing.

Review Processing

• The session result list GUID’s are used to retrieve data for review

Obfuscation & Encryption

• All DQ Global source code is protected by SmartAssembly ( https://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/smartassembly/)
• Data Encryption uses the SymmetricAlgorithm.  (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.symmetricalgorithm(v=vs.110).aspx