Matching Records

It is reasonable to expect that some import files may contain data for records that are already in Theatre Manager. You must tell the import process what to do with duplicate data by indicating which fields are used for matching purposes.

If you do not indicate any fields to be used for matching, then all records will be ADDED to the database.

If you indicate some fields for matching, then should Theatre Manager find a record on the database which matches the 'match' fields, the data on the matched database record will be replaced with the data in the import file. So, if the import file contains name and address only, and Theatre Manager is told to match on name, then the first person to match that name will get a new address, but the rest of their information on that patron record will remain untouched.

Some issues to consider

• If you do not have any fields marked to match, all records will be inserted. You can use the 'Merge' function on the patron list to combine people that seem to be duplicates at a later date. This is a manual process, but in many ways also the safest.
• If you select few matching fields (for example only Company was used to match), then the first company that matches the import record will have its contents replaced by the values on the import record. This would provide a very undesireable result if you were importing names and addresses for a corpration that you were adding to the database. Theatre manager would:
  • add the first record
  • find the same company on the second import
  • replace the first record with the address of the second person
  • and you would end up with only one record imported if all companies names were the same
• Use of too many matching fields will slow down the import a little and have a smaller chance of any matches occurring. This may effectively be the same as having no import fields.
• The best field to use for matching is the Patron Number. however, it is very unlikely that the patron number will be available if the data comes from an outside system.
• The second best option is to match on First Name, Last Name and one of the Phone Numbers, or Zip Code.

The example below shows a 'check mark' in the final column called Default if Blank for the field called company. This means that company has been selected as the only field to match on import for this example.