6

In our org we regularly end up with duplicate opportunities due to small problems in our API integration (out of my control, unfortunately, but I am responsible for much of the de-duping -- hence my user name).

Usually the opps are not perfect dupes; one of them will be the original (that the sales rep has been working on, has related activities, links back to a lead, etc). Then when the sale closes, the integration creates a whole new closed won opportunity with lots of details about the product in many custom fields. I have to clean this up by copying the field values from the new opp to the original, then delete the new opp.

Obviously a "merge opportunities" function would save me a lot of time here, so I'm considering building one with Apex/Visualforce. What I'm wondering is, what is the reason that this doesn't exist in vanilla Salesforce? Is it a big enough issue that there is something I have to watch out for in trying to build this myself?

Improve this question
2
  • 2
    I beleive Opps aren't typically created programmatically, and rely on User entry to be generated. If you think of Opportunities as beefed-up Tasks, then it would help explain why Opps cannot be merged; same as Tasks cannot be merged. What's more, the same Opportunity can have a valid reason for existing multiple times (such as multiple sales attempts within a year for the same product(s)).
    – James
    Commented May 4, 2015 at 17:41
  • I guess that makes sense. I mostly want to make sure there isn't some deep underlying reason that I shouldn't create a process to merge Opportunities, given that our org does create them via the API and we often end up with dupes that shouldn't be there.
    – OBerm
    Commented May 4, 2015 at 17:55

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

Plausible reason(s) for this would be:

  • merging two Opportunities typically means merging opportunity line items as well. This would make the UI more complex than currently provided by the Merge Accounts UI;
  • If the merge source Oppos had different pricebooks, this would be problematic if some line items from one Oppo were to be preserved as well as line items from the other Oppo
  • Quotes are sync'd to Oppos so this could be problematic as well
  • Unlike Accounts and Contacts which are representations of entities (businesses, people); Opportunities are representative of transactions (qualified lead-to-cash). Merging Opportunities can yield too many questions in the mind of the merging user as to what state things will be in after the merge - it is conceptually more difficult to wrap one's head around than merging some obvious duplicate contacts or accounts.
Improve this answer
1
  • Thanks, this is exactly the insight I was looking for! Our company doesn't currently use Products, Opportunity Products, or Price Books (which causes other problems), but since we are planning to implement them soon, I may hold off on designing a "merge opps" function until then.
    – OBerm
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 13:22
0

Try https://www.duplicatecheck.com/ - it handles opportunities. Per the reference above, since the UI would be messy it does take the approach to combine all the product line items and then you have to manually clean up the merged opportunity. Not perfect, but about as close as it gets out there I think. Decent product and support. Has cross object matching too.

Improve this answer
1

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .