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lenamtlFlag for Canada

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To prevent duplicated name & best practice

Hi,

1- Let say we don't want user to add duplicated company name in the system.
Using a search form, what will be the best practice to use for searching, How far should we go.
(the admin can set to make name and-or phone number verified before to add a new company)

What it does for now, if the system find an "Exact Match", it's prevent to add the company.

Right now if we search : "MyCompanyName"
this will not find "MyCompanyName Inc" exist
and will allow the user to add the company

When searching should the system ignore:
accent (in french we have éàî )
Special caracters like - space & _ . ,
Inc Lte

2- Another case when doing a "Regular Search" the system ask a minimum of 4 characters and "space" are considered as 1 characters to my opinion the space should not be counted
The system  allow to search "My  C"
What will be the best way to manage it?
 My Co = 4 not 5

I know we cannot control everything but I'm looking for a moderate way to prevent duplicate company name
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stu215
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NOTE: by using wildcards i was referring to your query... The user doesn't need to know that you are using them... ( '%userValue%' ) where userValue would be substituted with what they actually typed...
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ASKER

I don't think this is possible to use wildcards in this case or maybe I missed something

Here more info about the way it's working right now

User enter a company name
Transport ABC
click search button, the word Transport ABC is frozen in the field and cannot be edited at this point

If the exact match exist it's display the information
If the exact match does not exist the Add button appear

Using this logic we cannot use wildcards for the search because the name that is entered before the search will be the one use to create the contact (frozen) and will the one that will make appear or not the Add button.

Note: We usually use wildcards for other search let say for report or to filter list, but for that case it seems not possible.
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@Scott  - Agreed.

If you don't allow for some flexibility in the search/match then you will likely end up with a bunch of duplicates.  By making it easier for a user to select the correct one by presenting possible options prior to creation will decrease the likeliness of duplicates.  Most users will take the simplest path to achieve their objective and just create the new one under your present scenario if that means they can continue with what they need to do...

The only way to almost eliminate duplicates completely is to make creation an admin function where they are trained to not create dups... of course admins can make mistakes too... and then have the user select from a pre-defined list.
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ASKER

We will probably add a dropdown for company name extension (INC, LTE, Corp etc) in the first time and will take in consideration using wildcards and progressive search.

Adding a merge tool is also considered but not for now because of the complexity of the actual form.

Thanks