Using Foireann to identify and merge duplicate records

Club Administrators are able to merge duplicate member records on Foireann and therefore can undertake the necessary clean up of their club’s member list ahead of the 2022 season. It is highly recommended that club administrators use the following process in order to help identify potential duplicates within their club.

1.  Navigate to the Membership section of Foireann via the main navigation menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. If you are an Administrator of more than one Club, please select the card for the Club of which you want to merge member records.

3. Within the member tab, click the 'Identify Duplicates' button. The system will work behind the scenes to find all potential duplicates within your club’s member list. Until such time, the ‘Identify Duplicates’ button will update to display ‘Finding Duplicates’ and the button will be greyed out.

NOTE: Depending on how many members you have listed within your club, this process can take some time. Please note that you can navigate away from the membership screen and from the Foireann application altogether while duplicates are being identified.

NOTE: Member records are identified as duplicates based on the following criteria:

• Forename and Surname are similar (within 2 characters of a difference
• Gender is the same (if present)
• DOB is the same (if present)
  • It is worth noting that many records which were migrated from the old GAA Management System were given the DOB 01/01/1970 if their DOB was missing from their profile.
  • The DOB 01/01/1970 within Foireann is treated as a blank DOB and therefore if there are two records for a member with the same Forename, Surname and Gender and the two DOBs listed are 01/05/1996 and 01/01/1970 then this will be flagged as a potential duplicate on Foireann,

4. Once the duplicates have been identified, the button will be active and state ‘Review Duplicates’

5. By clicking ‘Review Duplicates’, the system will present a model which will outline any potential duplicates within your member list. In the top right-hand corner, the system will outline the number of potential duplicate records on the system for your club.

Within the model, the following information will be listed for each potential duplicate record.

NOTE: Only 5 records will appear at any given time within the model. If a member has more than 5 duplicate records on Foireann then the administrator will need to complete the merge action multiple times.

Field	Description
Name	Forename and Surname will be displayed, with a link to view the member’s full profile.
Registration ID	ID linked to the member record (there can be multiple IDs linked to one member record)
DOB	DOB of the member (if blank no DOB is listed within the member’s profile)
Address	The address listed within the member’s profile (Click the ‘expand’ button to show more information including Postcode/Eircode)
Account Status	If a member has login details to Foireann. The username linked to the member record will be displayed alongside the last date of which the member logged into Foireann using the username.
Family	If the member is linked to a family on Foireann, the family name will be listed.
Clubs	Any club the member has listed within their profile will be displayed.
Memberships	Any memberships the member has linked to the record will be listed.
Additional Information	Gender, phone number, medical information and email address will be listed.

NOTE: If any information listed within the profile is different from the member records presented. For example, a difference in Address, Family, DOB etc will be highlighted in red to draw your attention. It is incredibly important that you review each member record within the modal before merging as this action cannot be undone.

After carefully reviewing the member information, you must decide which member record should be made the primary record and which record(s) will be merged into the primary record.

NOTE: If you come across member records in which you are unsure how to proceed, you can simply click the ‘Skip This Record’ button to move on to the next set of duplicates. If you skip a record, it can be revisited once you have made your way through the list of duplicate records. Alternatively, you can use the Manual Identifying Process outlined HERE to merge the member records when ready.

Please be very careful when choosing the primary record and the merging record(s) as important data could be lost if the right primary record is not chosen.

For example, if one record contains a family and the other does not contain a family, you MUST choose the record which has a family listed as the primary record otherwise the link to the family will be lost.

In the table below, we have outlined what data is kept, lost and merged on Foireann.

	Primary Record	Merging Record(s)
Name	Kept	Lost
Registration ID	Kept	Merged into primary record
DOB	Kept	Lost
Address	Kept	Lost
Account Status	Kept	Lost
Family	Kept	Lost
Clubs	Kept	Merged into primary record
Memberships	Kept	Merged into primary record
Additional Information	Kept	Lost

Where possible, we try to retain as much information as possible from all records. For example, a member can have multiple IDs listed in their profile, can be linked to multiple clubs and can have multiple memberships therefore the final member record could have 3 membership IDs, 6 memberships etc.

6. Once you have decided on the primary record, click the ‘Make Primary Record’ button. After doing this, the record of the member will be highlighted with a green border with Primary Record stated at the top.

NOTE: You can undo the primary record by clicking ‘Undo Primary Record’ if you selected the wrong record.

7. After selecting the primary record, select any other records which you wish to merge into the primary record by clicking ‘Merge Into Primary Record’. After doing this, the record of the member will be highlighted with a blue border with Ready for Merge stated at the top.

8. Click Merge
9. A warning message will appear to outline what information will be merged into the primary record.

10. Once happy, tick the box beside the ‘Confirm’ button

11. Click Merge. The next set of duplicate member records will be displayed for you to repeat the process outlined above.