QUESTION:
Can DemandTools be used with Person Accounts, and if so are there any special considerations?
ANSWER:
Yes, DemandTools can be used with Person Accounts. Depending on what operation being performed there may be some tweaking required. Below are the most common questions/issues to note when working with Person Accounts.
MERGING PERSON ACCOUNTS
Can Person Accounts be merged using DemandTools?
Yes. Person Accounts can be merged in Single Table Dedupe. Select the Account table as the object to dedupe. There are two issues to be aware of:
- In Screen #1 add the condition "ispersonaccount = true" to only search for duplicates among Person Accounts. To look for duplicates among Business Accounts use "ispersonaccount = false".
- Person Accounts CANNOT be merged with Business Accounts. Attempting to do this will result in the following error:
- "Msg:The accounts cannot be merged. Selected records do not have compatible record types and cannot be merged together."
- Although matching can be done on the "Account Name" field, it is better to match on the separate fields for "First" and "Last" name. "Account Name" is a formula field based off of the first name and last name field.
Matching on "First Name" separately will allow using the "First Name" mapping type to match names like:
- David -> Dave
- Mike -> Michael
Or, match on just the first initial of first name etc.
NOTE 1: There are NO prebuilt scenarios for Person Accounts. The prebuilt Account scenarios that ship with the tool are for Business Accounts only.
NOTE 2: DO NOT try to merge Person Accounts by selecting the Contact table as the object to dedupe. Although you can find duplicate "proxy" Contacts created from Person Accounts, attempting to merge them will result in the following error:
- "Merge Call Failure",Contact,,,,,,"Object reference not set to an instance of an object."
MERGING BUSINESS CONTACTS
I have a combination of Business Accounts and Person Accounts in Salesforce and I need to be able to merge the Business Contacts, but DemandTools is pulling in both Business Contacts and "proxy" Person Account Contacts when I select Contacts as the object to merge. How do I just find the Business Accounts?
- Person Account "proxy" Contacts need to be filtered from Contact merging. On Screen#1 use a condition where "ispersonaccount = false" to look for duplicates JUST within your Business Contacts.
- Person Accounts CANNOT be merged with Business Contacts. Attempting to do this will result in the following error:
- "Merge Call Failure",Contact,,,,,,"Object reference not set to an instance of an object."
MATCHING BUSINESS CONTACTS TO PERSON ACCOUNTS
Can I use DemandTools to look for dupes between Business Contacts and Person Accounts?
Yes, but they cannot be merged together. Once you know which Contacts are also Person Accounts you could look at ways to move any sub-objects from the Contact to the matching Person Account record and then ultimately delete the Business Contact. There is NOT a module in DemandTools to do this automatically (merge a Business Contact into a Person Account), so the process to do this would be manual.
There are actually 2 ways to identify the matching records.
- Use Single Table Dedupe to match on Contacts (Person Account "proxy" Contacts to the Business Contacts). Use the "Filter Match Results" option (new in version 2.7) to ONLY return matching groups where at least one of the matches is a Person Account Contact. The condition will be ispersonaccount = true.
- Note: Will also return where all the Contacts in the group are Person Account "proxy" Contacts. To avoid/minimize this, users should dedupe Person Accounts to Person Accounts first.
- Then export the grid data to a spreadsheet. Be sure to include the "ispersonaccount" flag, and the Account ID (which will show the Business and/or Person Account ID) in the grid data. This will identify which Person Account the Business Contact will need to manually be merged into.
- Use Discovery - Find/Report ID's to match Business Contacts to Person Accounts. First export all Business Contacts to a spreadsheet (MassEffect could be used to do this). Then use Discovery -> FindId's to match this spreadsheet to Contacts to the Account table. Use a condition to ONLY match to Account where "ispersonaccount = true".
CONVERTING
Can I Use DemandTools to Convert Leads to Person Accounts?
Yes. This is done using Lead to Account Deduplication or MassLeadConvert.
If you have a combination of Person and Business Accounts you will want to use conditions to only look for Leads where the "Company" = blank, and compare to Accounts where "ispersonaccount = true".
For the matching criteria you would match the Person Account fields to the appropriate Lead fields, i.e. First, Last Name and Email etc. (would not use Account Name in the matching).
When a Lead is being converted, Salesforce checks to see if the Company field is populated to determine if it should be converted to a Contact or Person Account. If empty, it converts to a Person Account.
IMPORTING
Can I upload Person Accounts using MassEffect?
Yes. Person Accounts are inserted into the Account table in Salesforce. To indicate that this is a Person Account vs. a Business Account will need to map over the Person Account Record Type ID to the "record type id" field. DO NOT map any data to the "Name" field. First and Last name should be mapped to the appropriate fields, and these will be used by Salesforce to populate the "Name" field (formula field which concatenates First and Last name).
The Discovery module in DemandTools can be used to determine if any of these records already exist in Salesforce before inserting. A condition to only match to Accounts where the "ispersonaccount" field is TRUE (or where recordtype = person account) will be needed when selecting which Accounts to match the input file to. The "Account Name" field cannot be used in the matching, instead use the first and/or last name fields. This will also allow the option to use the "FirstName" mapping type when matching on first names.
NOTE: PeopleImport CANNOT be used to import Person Accounts.
LINKING PERSON ACCOUNTS TO A CAMPAIGN
Person Accounts are linked to Campaigns via the CampaignMember table. This table requires the Contact ID and WILL NOT ACCEPT the Person Account ID instead.
Please refer to the following solution for more details: Linking Person Accounts to a Campaign
