Is it possible to check the email column for duplicate entries? I have a form where people can submit once per email address. I would like to automatically filter out duplicate submissions. Is that possible?
Hi Roel,
There is actually a pretty cool way to check for duplicates in monday.com.
Create a Connect Boards column and connect the board to itself. Then add the following automation:
And configure it in the following way:
This will create a connection when a duplicate email is detected. You can use the “When Column changes” custom automation trigger to automate further actions, or create filtered views based on the connection column.
You might also want to use the item creation trigger to check for duplicates (this covers all bases):
Hope that helps! Please feel free to reach out if you need help configuring this or how to tie it into further automations.
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Thanks! I’m gonna try this.
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Hello @RoelBijvelds,
You can use the Duplicates and Uniques for this. Here is a demo of how.
If you need any help with the app, you can always reach out at support@kolaai.com
This is a great way to find duplicates, which I have used several times. Almost everytime the customer is loving it, but ask “Now when I know, why is there no way to merge the duplicates?” Typically they would like to say that this Item is the master, and the other one should be merged into that one with additional information from the other.
Have you figured out how to handle such cases?
Rgs
Jo Inge
Hi Jo,
That’s an interesting question…
I would typically consult a client to work on the process that created the duplicate. The reason being is that there are so many different variables in having “bad data” that it’s typically very hard to create logic to fix it.
For instance:
- Is it really a duplicate or has somebody just reused an ID? Or is it a typo? It’s often very hard for us to know this.
- How do they want data to be merged? monday.com has many different data types. Do they want long text columns to be concatenated for instance? What is the logic for dates? There may be many dates and the logic could be different in each case, but it could also be situational.
- What are the exceptions to the rules above? Because we’re working with bad data, really anything is possible.
I think you’re often skating on very thin ice by trying to solve duplicates with automation.
So, as I said, I would be looking at the data entry process and trying to find ways to avoid creating duplicates in the first place. If I was to create an automation, I would have it trigger early enough that there wouldn’t be enough data entered for any of the question marks above to matter. i.e. at item creation—have them enter the id/mail first and they’ll get immediate feedback on whether or not it’s a duplicate (via an update or something).