preventing duplicate phone entries - during import and manual update
would like to know how folks handle duplicate phone numbers I realize that Globiflow can help in some cases, but it seems there is a general problem that must exist because there can be multiple phone numbers and multiple phone numbers of the same type (ie: work) so there is possibly a many to many kind of lookup needed.
For example, if an item has two phone numbers entered as type work and one entered as type home, when exporting there will be two numbers in the work column and one in home.
Conversely the same situation would exist if a new item were to be added by import with those same numbers. The import spreadsheet would have the two work numbers separated by a semicolon in the work column.
Questions - For my application I could use text fields and limit users to two or three text fields used for phone numbers. That would simplify the issues, but I'd lose the click to call phone icon. I **think** that I could create a calc field that displays each entered phone number with a hyperlink so that is an option, but it's nicer looking to just use the phone field type. And less wasteful for the more common case of having a single phone number.
Anyway, I hope that someone can share any ideas about how to best handle phone number fields while minimizing the risks of duplicates.
A related goal is to also maintain a method of marking certain phone numbers as dnc (do not call), so the checking for duplicates is even more complicated....
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Anyone have ideas about preventing duplicates?
The only solution I can see is to always export 100% of items in an app, perform the comparison outside of Podio using Excel and then import new items.
The 'Key' check seems to only be available for text fields ... possibly some other types, but it won't check for a phone field.
I'm open to any ideas here.... My use case is where we get about 20 new sales leads each day and I wish to enter all of them each evening by import but skip any that have already been entered manually during the day, which can happen.
I will also have occasional need to import 1000+ leads and it would be nice to avoid phone duplicates there too, however since this is done much less frequently I can live with using excel for the duplicate checking. -
Hi Rich,
Not just phone numbers but duplicate entries in general.
We use Podio as a CRM and constantly get leads from the same people from different numbers and locations, family members, organisations etc. So we're also looking for an effective method to filter duplicates as they come in to our leads app.
Currently we use a VA to do the filtering and checking and it takes a lot of time, when she could be doing more productive things, so I'm interested to hear if other Podio users have setup workflows or have other methods to tackle this problem.
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agreed Steve -
I suspect that the only truly feasible answer is to handle the importing through the API, where complex checking can occur, but that goes beyond what can practically be done using Globiflow I imagine.
Let's see if anyone stumbles on this thread and has a good approach to share!
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Rich,
Yes I agree, but thats beyond my understanding, so I guess I'll be waiting for someone to come up with a 3rd party extension to do the job! In the meantime, I'll be working through my leads and wasting huge amounts of valuable time - shame, it the only drawback I have with Podio at present!
I might just keep coming back to "bump" the thread!
Thanks
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