Duplicate management: Matching records with filled in value vs empty value

Question

Looking for some bright minds who maybe see a workaround for my problem:

We want to use the standard matching rules to identify potential duplicate contacts. An issue that keeps coming back is: we want to match records with filled in value vs empty value. Example:

• FirstName "Robin" and FirstName "Robin" should match
• FirstName "Robin" and FirstName "George" should not match
• FirstName "Robin" and FirstName empty should match

The last point does not seem possible using matching rules, since setting "Match Blank Fields" to true will only allow for:

• FirstName empty and FirstName empty should match

The only way to do this I see, is leave FirstName out of the matching criteria as a whole (thus the returned duplicate record set will contain too many items) and then later on fire some apex magic that deletes duplicate record items with filled in but different first names.

Is there any option I missed?

Answer 1

What if you split the Two Situations. In the duplicate rule you can set conditions for the record that is being edited or created. Scenario 1. the record is not empty (use your matching rules) Scenario 2. the record is empty (use your matching rules without the FirstName rule)

So For Scenario 1 set as Condition Name to be not Empty. And for Scenario 2 Name to be empty. Then as Matching rule for Scenario 1 includes exact matching on Name. The Matching rule for Scenario 2 will not include exact matching on Name but the condition for Name to be empty.

              | Record 1  | Record 2

   Scenario 1 | Robin     | Robin
   Scenario 2 | Robin     | Empty
   Scenario 2 | Empty     | Empty 
   No Match   | Robin     | George
   No Match   | Empty     | Robin

Record 2 is the one you would edit, create in this case