Using Association Cleanup on Already-Associated Contacts

Although Association Cleanup is primarily intended to automatically associate people with companies, you can also use it to fix duplicate phone numbers and addresses, even in already-associated contacts.

This situation can occur if users associate people with companies but enter phones and addresses for the person contacts, rather than selecting to share the company versions of those same phones and addresses.

For example, suppose you had the following company in the Firm Contacts - Companies folder:

World Wide Products, Inc.

900 Sunset Ridge Road

Suite 500

Schaumburg, IL 60877

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

Then assume users entered the following people and associated each person with the World Wide Products company:

People Contacts

Name	Company Name	Business Address	Business Phone
Lauren Alerton	World Wide Products, Inc.	900 Sunset Ridge Road Suite 500 Schaumburg, IL 60877	Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]
Diane Peterson	World Wide Products, Inc.	900 Sunset Ridge Road Schaumburg, IL 60877	Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Although both people are associated with the same company, the phones and addresses have been entered independently. Users will not benefit from the primary advantage of using company association - automatic updates to contact information when that information is changed for the company. Also, there are minor discrepancies in the phones and addresses for each individual, but they should really be the same.

To fix this situation, run Association Cleanup on the associated people. InterAction compares the professional phones and addresses for each person to the phones and addresses of the company. InterAction’s matching processing is sophisticated enough to match all of the phones and addresses, shown in the example, with the company address and phones, despite the minor differences. InterAction then removes the items from the individual person contacts and shares the company versions of the same items. When this process is done, each person uses the same phones and addresses listed for the company.