CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi,

I'm new to CiviCRM and I'm just preparing to import a load of ndividuals.

I'm using the external ID field to uniquely identify the contacts when I'm doing multiple tag imprting and started to look into the dupe matching rules in order to amend them to use the external ID field.

Anyway, I spotted somthing which I can't get my head round (even after reading the manuals and forum). My understanding is that 'Strict' rules are used for non-admin and unattended processes like import and API and therefore applies rigid criteria in order not to find false matches. 'Fuzzy' rules are used when an admin (human) can see all the matches and decide whether they are a match or not.

Therefore you'd expect the fuzzy rules to find more matches (IE their criteira be easier to trigger)

My point is that the out of the box rules seem not to follow this principle.

For Individuals: The strict rule is just email match but fuzzy has three fields where the threshold implies that all three fields must match to trigger it (IE email + first name + last name must all be the same.)

Is it me or does this seem back to front?

Have I just misunderstod the out of the box rules?

Cheers,

Dave

PS - I checked the demo and the rules are the same as mine.
PPS - why are the strict and fuzzy rules for the other two contact types identical out of the box? again is this assuming that you should update them before use?


Is it me or does this seem back to front

Thanks for the info, we don't have multiple addresses at the mo but I'll keep that in mind!

It just seemed strange that the 'Fuzzy' rule which is supposed to pick up more matches is set with a stricter rule.

Cheers,

Dave