Merging a user's duplicate account


Duplicate accounts for a single user can make it challenging to provide great customer support. To avoid this, you can add multiple email addresses and social media handles to a user's profile. This enables you to properly identify the user regardless of the email address or social media channel they submit requests through without generating duplicate accounts. However, any time a user submits a request from an email or social media account that isn't in their user profile, a duplicate end user account might be created. This article describes how to merge duplicate accounts when this happens.


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Summary: ◀▼
You can merge duplicate end user accounts to consolidate tickets and user data, improving support accuracy. Merging combines tickets and email identities but removes tags, notes, and user fields from the merged account. It requires both accounts to be end users with fewer than 10,000 tickets each and cannot be undone. This helps maintain a single user profile despite multiple contact points.




Duplicate accounts for a single user can make it challenging to provide great
customer support. To avoid this, you can add multiple email addresses and social
media handles to a user's profile. This enables you to properly identify the user
regardless of the email address or social media channel they submit requests
through without generating duplicate accounts. However, any time a user submits a
request from an email or social media account that isn't in their user profile, a
duplicate end user account might be created. This article describes how to merge
duplicate accounts when this happens.
This article contains the following topics:
Requirements and considerations for merging end user accounts
Merging duplicate end user accounts
Understanding how user data is merged




Requirements and considerations for merging end user accounts

If you do end up with multiple accounts for a single end user, you can merge
one of the accounts into the other, as long as the following is true:
Both accounts are for end users, not admins or agents.
If the end user's account is unverified, they must have one or
both of the following: an email address or an X (formerly
Twitter) account.
Each of the accounts to be merged have 10,000 tickets or less.



Before attempting to merge end user accounts, consider the following:
If your account uses single sign-on and handles user
authentication with JWT or SAML, you can merge end user accounts
only if there are no external IDs associated with the merging
end user.
Merging end user accounts can't be undone. Make sure to select the
correct user accounts.
After merging accounts, any tickets created by the duplicate (now
merged) account are updated with the primary user account. These
ticket updates appear in the ticket event log as a requester
change, but do not cause triggers to fire.





Merging duplicate end user accounts

Merging duplicate accounts enables your agents to provide better customer
support to your end users. However, a merge can't be undone. Be careful when
selecting the accounts to merge.

To merge a user's duplicate account
In Support, click Customers
( ) in the sidebar.
In the Search bar, enter the name of the user you want to
merge in the search box and click the user's name when it
appears. Alternatively, you can open a user's profile
from one of their tickets.

Click the User options menu in the upper right, then select
Merge into another user.

Enter the user's name and all users that match what you entered
are displayed. Select the correct user and then click
Merge.

When prompted, click Confirm and Merge to confirm the
merge. If you want to cancel the merge, close the window without
clicking Confirm and Merge.





Understanding how user data is merged

When you merge one user account into another, the tickets owned by the user
account being merged become the tickets of the user that account was merged
into and the data in each user profile is combined. The following table
describes how user profile data is handled as a result of a merge. The user
being merged is referred to as the merging user and the target of the
merge is referred to as the receiving user. In general, the merging
user will lose all data, except for tickets and email identities. The
merging user's account is also queued for permanent deletion
following the merge.









User ticket and profile data
Merge results




Tickets
All of the merging user's requested tickets
are now requested by the receiving user. CCs are
treated similarly for non-archived tickets.
Tickets that are part of the
merge, including archived and closed tickets, show
the update in their ticket events
log.



Phone number
Merging user's number is added as a second
number in the receiving user's profile


Direct Line
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge.


Primary email
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge.


Secondary email
All secondary email addresses are maintained,
merging user's email is added as an additional
secondary email address.


Language
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge.


Time Zone
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge.


Organization
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge. If multiple organizations are enabled in
the receiving account, all organizations will be
merged. If multiple organizations are not enabled
and there is no original organization only one
will be merged. Tickets aren't automatically
updated and may maintain old organization
values.


Tags
Merging user's tags are lost.


Details
Merging user's details are lost.


Notes
Merging user's notes are lost.


Picture
Receiving user's value is not affected by
merge.


User fields
Receiving user's fields remain intact.
Merging user's fields are lost.


Help Center contributions
Votes, subscriptions, community posts, and
comments on articles and posts in Help Center
still exist and are visible, but they are lost
(they don't become associated with the target
user).







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