Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) Master Data Management Reference > Configuring Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) to Resolve Duplicate Records > Configuring Duplicate-Resolution Functionality >

Scenario for Using Account and Contact Merge and Unmerge

This topic gives the following example of how Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) might be used. You might use Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) differently, depending on your business model.

A data steward is responsible for deployed customer information found in Oracle Customer Hub (UCM). After loading several batch jobs of contact or account data successfully from subsidiary entities, the data steward reviews the results of the matching processes and merges the records that are identified as potential duplicate records.

NOTE:  The preconfigured UCM Merge Service supports Account and Contact objects.

For information on new or changed UI objects, see Additions and Enhancements for Account and Contact Merge and Unmerge Object.

About Merge and Unmerge

Merge requests might be taken for Contact and Accounts records in the UI and through Web services. You can capture any two records in the UI to perform a merge. You can capture associated information during the merge. The associated information will be available and restored to the victim record after the records are unmerged. After the data steward processes the merge request, the requestors receive a merge result message provided that the requestor is registered with publish and subscribe.

When Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) is the customer master and also the service provider, service requestors can invoke only the Submit Merge Request service. Only a data steward can process the merge request and decide whether it is a valid merge request and process the merge. The following conditions must exist for a valid merge:

• The interface of the service is the external system survivor ID and the victim ID.
• The two records in the merge request have to be in the Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) database. Otherwise, the merge request will be rejected.
• The merge request will be put in the request table, and it waits for the data steward to review and execute the merge operation.
• Only the data steward calls the process merge request service. The process merge request service calls the survivorship service to generate the updated version of the survivor record if the Survivorship Engine is enabled. The survivorship service updates all the foreign key fields that are linked to the victim record to survivor record in the Oracle Customer Hub (UCM) database.
• The UCM submit merge request service provides an asynchronous response of the merge results, but the requestor receives a synchronized response for the request status, such as Pending, Rejected, and so on. After the data steward processes the merge request, the requestors get the merge result only if they registered with the publish and subscribe service.

Supported Child Objects for Merge and Unmerge

You can perform merge and unmerge operations on child objects of the Account and Contact objects. As merge and unmerge operations are carried out on the Account or Contact objects, there are child objects for each object whose respective children records are re-parented accordingly. During a merge operation all the records associated to a merged child object are re-parented to the surviving record. During an unmerge operation a child object's records are considered for being re-parented back to the record that is being unmerged. You can view a list of supported child objects considered during an unmerge operation on the Account and Contact object by viewing the respective user properties of the UCM Merge Service.

The UCM Merge Service uses the Contact_Merge_Support_Child0, and Account_Merge_Support_Child0 user properties to determine which child object values will be considered for merge and unmerge operations for the Contact object and Account object respectively. From Siebel Innovation Pack 2014, the Contact_Merge_Support_Child0 has a newly supported value, SM Contact Social Profile, which stores information about a user's social media profile. The values for these user properties are show in Table 33.