Multiple External IDs to Match the Same Contacts From Different Import Lists?

[dwfriederichs]

I've been trying to think of a good way to do this and hoping someone on the forum can help.

I'm using CiviCRM to manage a group of fraternity contacts for a metro area.  The membership list can come from two places - the national fraternity and the university the alumnus attended.  It's advantageous to have information from both because the fraternity may have contact information the university doesn't, and vice versa. 

I have the fraternity ID set as the external ID, so I can import changes very easily by matching on that field.  I'd like to do the same for the university ID.  I could create a custom field for this, but I'm not seeing how to designate it at as a "matching" field for an import.  Using email as a unique identifier also doesn't work well because most of the contacts I want to import don't have email addresses in my records.

Does anyone have a suggestion of how to solve this scenario?  Thanks in advance for your help.

[petednz]

I think the custom field shoudl work for you.

Go to civicrm/contact/deduperules?action=add&contact_type=Individual&reset=1 and create a new Strict rule using your custom field, then i think this should be available to you as a matching rule on the Import wizard page