Sequenced Merges

You use a sequenced merge to merge multiple records into one record. You assign sequence numbers to the records so that the record with the lowest sequence number becomes the remaining record, and the other records, the records to be deleted, are merged with the remaining record.

When records are merged using a sequence merge, the following rules apply:

• All non-NULL fields from the remaining record are kept.

  Any fields that were NULL in the remaining record are populated by information (if any) from the deleted records. Missing fields in the remaining record are populated in ascending sequence number order from corresponding fields in the deleted records.

• The children and grandchildren (for example, activities, orders, assets, service requests, and so on) of the deleted records are merged by associating them to the remaining record.

  Sequenced merge is especially useful if many fields are empty, such as when a contact record with a Sequence of 2 has a value for Email address, but its Work Phone # field is empty, and a contact record with a Sequence number of 3 has a value of Work Phone #. If the field Email address and Work Phone # in the remaining record (sequence number 1) are empty, the value of Email address is taken from the records with sequence number 2, and the value of Work Phone # is taken from the record of sequence number 3.

  A sequence number is required for each record even if there are only two records.