When you have duplicate lead, contact, or account records in the database, cleaning up your data and consolidating the records might be a good idea. You can merge up to three records of the same sObject type. The merge operation merges up to three records into one of the records, deletes the others, and reparents any related records.
The following shows how to merge an existing Account record into a master account. The account to merge has a related contact, which is moved to the master account record after the merge operation. Also, after merging, the merge record is deleted and only one record remains in the database. This examples starts by creating a list of two accounts and inserts the list. Then it executes queries to get the new account records from the database, and adds a contact to the account to be merged. Next, it merges the two accounts. Finally, it verifies that the contact has been moved to the master account and the second account has been deleted.
// Insert new accounts List<Account> ls = new List<Account>{ new Account(name='Acme Inc.'), new Account(name='Acme') }; insert ls; // Queries to get the inserted accounts Account masterAcct = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name = 'Acme Inc.' LIMIT 1]; Account mergeAcct = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Name = 'Acme' LIMIT 1]; // Add a contact to the account to be merged Contact c = new Contact(FirstName='Joe',LastName='Merged'); c.AccountId = mergeAcct.Id; insert c; try { merge masterAcct mergeAcct; } catch (DmlException e) { // Process exception System.debug('An unexpected error has occurred: ' + e.getMessage()); } // Once the account is merged with the master account, // the related contact should be moved to the master record. masterAcct = [SELECT Id, Name, (SELECT FirstName,LastName From Contacts) FROM Account WHERE Name = 'Acme Inc.' LIMIT 1]; System.assert(masterAcct.getSObjects('Contacts').size() > 0); System.assertEquals('Joe', masterAcct.getSObjects('Contacts')[0].get('FirstName')); System.assertEquals('Merged', masterAcct.getSObjects('Contacts')[0].get('LastName')); // Verify that the merge record got deleted Account[] result = [SELECT Id, Name FROM Account WHERE Id=:mergeAcct.Id]; System.assertEquals(0, result.size());
This second example is similar to the previous except that it uses the Database.merge method (instead of the merge statement). The last argument of Database.merge is set to false to have any errors encountered in this operation returned in the merge result instead of getting exceptions. The example merges two accounts into the master account and retrieves the returned results. The example creates a master account and two duplicates, one of which has a child contact. It verifies that after the merge the contact is moved to the master account.
// Create master account Account master = new Account(Name='Account1'); insert master; // Create duplicate accounts Account[] duplicates = new Account[]{ // Duplicate account new Account(Name='Account1, Inc.'), // Second duplicate account new Account(Name='Account 1') }; insert duplicates; // Create child contact and associate it with first account Contact c = new Contact(firstname='Joe',lastname='Smith', accountId=duplicates[0].Id); insert c; // Merge accounts into master Database.MergeResult[] results = Database.merge(master, duplicates, false); for(Database.MergeResult res : results) { if (res.isSuccess()) { // Get the master ID from the result and validate it System.debug('Master record ID: ' + res.getId()); System.assertEquals(master.Id, res.getId()); // Get the IDs of the merged records and display them List<Id> mergedIds = res.getMergedRecordIds(); System.debug('IDs of merged records: ' + mergedIds); // Get the ID of the reparented record and // validate that this the contact ID. System.debug('Reparented record ID: ' + res.getUpdatedRelatedIds()); System.assertEquals(c.Id, res.getUpdatedRelatedIds()[0]); } else { for(Database.Error err : res.getErrors()) { // Write each error to the debug output System.debug(err.getMessage()); } } }
For more information on merging leads, contacts and accounts, see the Salesforce online help.