1. Web Services On Demand Guide
  2. MergeRecords

MergeRecords

Merges records for certain record types.

Objects Supported

MergeRecords is supported for the following record types: Account, Accreditation, Address, Allocation, Application, Asset, Broker Profile, Business Plan, Campaign, Certification, Claim, Contact, Contact State License, Course, Coverage, Custom Objects 01 through 40, Damage, Deal Registration, Dealer, Event, Exam, Financial Account, Financial Account Holder, Financial Account Holding, Financial Plan, Financial Product, Financial Transaction, Fund, Fund Request, HCP Contact Allocation, Household, Insurance Property, Involved Party, Lead, MDF Request, Message Plan, Message Plan Item, Message Plan Item Relations, Objective, Opportunity, Partner, Partner Program, Plan Account, Plan Contact, Plan Opportunity, Policy, Policy Holder, Portfolio, Product Indication, Sample Disclaimer, Sample Request, Sample Transaction, Service Request, Solution, Special Pricing Request, Vehicle.

See Oracle Migration Tool On Demand Guide for a reference table about the mappings of object names to the display names for the record types in the Oracle CRM On Demand user interface.

If an invalid object name is provided with the MergeRecords method, then an error message is displayed.

Usage

You use the MergeRecords method to merge records. When you merge two records, you specify the record that you want to keep, which is called the primary record, and the record that is to be deleted, which is called the duplicate record.

You must identify a reference to a primary record and a reference to a duplicate record in the request. To identify the primary record, you must specify either a PrimaryId or a PrimaryExternalSystemId argument. To identify the duplicate record, you must specify either a DuplicateId or a DuplicateExternalSystemId argument.

The following rules apply to merging records:

  • Fields in the primary parent record that contain data are retained.

  • Fields in the primary record that are blank get the value from the duplicate record, if it has a value and if the MergeWhenPrimaryBlank argument is set to true.

  • Fields in the primary parent record that are blank remain blank, if the MergeWhenPrimaryBlank argument is not set, or is set to a value other than true.

The MergeDuplicateBooks argument together with the Enable Merge of Duplicate Record's Books setting in the company profile determine whether the books of duplicate records are added to the primary record:

  • If the company profile setting is not selected, OR if the company profile setting is selected AND the MergeDuplicateBooks argument is not set to true, then the duplicate record's books are not added to the primary record.

  • If the company profile setting is selected AND the MergeDuplicateBooks argument is set to true, then the duplicate record's books are added to the primary record.

The Merge Web service has the same security restrictions as in the Oracle CRM On Demand UI regarding privilege and record permissions. The merge operation is only allowed for users who have Delete access to the record type or who have the Merge Records Without Delete Access privilege for their role.

The table in the next section describes the arguments taken by MergeRecords.

Possible Reasons for Failure of the Merge Operation

If there are more than 9999 records of any one record type linked to either of the records that you want to merge, then the merge operation will not complete successfully. Also, if there are large numbers of records of any type linked to either of the records that you want to merge, then the merge operation might time out, even if the number of linked records of any one record type does not exceed 9999. Other factors can also cause a merge operation to time out, such as the types of records that are involved in the merge operation, the speed of your network, and the load on the Oracle CRM On Demand database and server. You can work around these issues by doing the following:

  • Unlink some of the linked records from the parent record as necessary before you merge the parent records.

  • Perform merge operations during off-peak hours.

Table Arguments taken by MergeRecords

Field Name Description Required Default I/O

PrimaryId

 The ID of the primary record. One of these arguments is required Not applicable Input

PrimaryExternalSystemId

 The externalsystemID of the primary record. Not applicable Input

DuplicateId

 The ID of the duplicate record. One of these arguments is required Not applicable Input

DuplicateExternalSystemId

 The externalsystemID of the duplicate record. Not applicable Input

MergeWhenPrimaryBlank

 Determines how records are merged when fields in the primary record are blank.True values are set as Y, Yes, True, or 1.False values are any other values including blanks. No False Input

RecordType

 The record type; this is case sensitive. Yes Not applicable Input

MergeDuplicateBooks

 Determines whether duplicate record’s books are retained. No False Input

Return Value of the Call

The following four values are returned:

  • MergedRecordId. The ID of the merged record, that is, the primary record.

  • MergedRecordExternalId. The externalsystemID of the merged record.

  • DeletedRecordId. The ID of the deleted record, that is, the duplicate record.

  • DeletedRecordExternalId. The externalsystemID of the merged record.

Sample SOAP Request - MergeRecords

The following SOAP request merges a contact record with DuplicateExternalSystemId = abc223 into a contact record with Id = ADSA-93DZIC.

Note: To identify the primary record, you can specify either the <PrimaryId> or <PrimaryExternalSystemId> argument, and to specify the duplicate record you can use either the <DuplicateId> or <DuplicateExternalSystemId> argument.

The sample also demonstrates passing in the optional <MergeWhenPrimaryBlank> argument to copy the value for a field in the duplicate record to the primary record when the field in the primary record is blank.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/
XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-
secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <soap:Header>
      <wsse:Security>
         <wsse:UsernameToken>
            <wsse:Username>%%%USERNAME%%%</wsse:Username>
            <wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">%%%PASSWORD%%%</wsse:Password>
         </wsse:UsernameToken>
      </wsse:Security>
   </soap:Header>
   <soap:Body>
      <MergeRecordsWS_MergeRecords_Input xmlns="urn:crmondemand/ws/mergerecords/">
         <PrimaryId>ADSA-93DZIC</PrimaryId>
         <DuplicateExternalSystemId>abc223</DuplicateExternalSystemId>
         <MergeWhenPrimaryBlank>Y</MergeWhenPrimaryBlank>
         <RecordType>Contact</RecordType>
      </MergeRecordsWS_MergeRecords_Input>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Sample SOAP Response

The following response contains the IDs of the merged and deleted records:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://
www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <SOAP-ENV:Body>
      <ns:MergeRecordsWS_MergeRecords_Output xmlns:ns="urn:crmondemand/ws/mergerecords/">
         <ns:DeletedRecordExternalSystemId>abc223</ns:DeletedRecordExternalSystemId>
         <ns:DeletedRecordId>ADSA-93ET5I</ns:DeletedRecordId>
         <ns:MergedRecordExternalSystemId>ABC123</ns:MergedRecordExternalSystemId>
         <ns:MergedRecordId>ADSA-93DZIC</ns:MergedRecordId>
      </ns:MergeRecordsWS_MergeRecords_Output>
   </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>