Account Merge Trigger Execution Order

Question

When account is merged, what's the expected trigger order? Does the wining account get updated first or does the losing account get deleted? What happens when the child records are reparented?

Answer 1

From the Apex Developer Guide

Triggers and Merge Statements

Merge events do not fire their own trigger events. Instead, they fire delete and update events as follows:

Deletion of losing records

A single merge operation fires a single delete event for all records that are deleted in the merge. To determine which records were deleted as a result of a merge operation use the MasterRecordId field in Trigger.old. When a record is deleted after losing a merge operation, its MasterRecordId field is set to the Id of the winning record. The MasterRecordId field is only set in after delete trigger events. If your application requires special handling for deleted records that occur as a result of a merge, you need to use the after delete trigger event.

Update of the winning record

A single merge operation fires a single update event for the winning record only. Any child records that are reparented as a result of the merge operation do not fire triggers.

Example

For example, if two contacts are merged, only the delete and update contact triggers fire. No triggers for records related to the contacts, such as accounts or opportunities, fire.

Trigger Order of Execution The following is the order of events when a merge occurs:

1. The before delete trigger fires.
2. The system deletes the necessary records due to the merge, assigns new parent records to the child records, and sets the MasterRecordId field on the deleted records.
3. The after delete trigger fires.
4. The system does the specific updates required for the master record. Normal update triggers apply.