When you merge duplicate contacts, Rhythm keeps the contact you choose as the surviving record and removes the others. This reference explains what happens to records connected to the contacts you merge away, including memberships, certifications, donor history, attached files, and other records in Rhythm that pointed to them. For the steps to run a merge, see Merge Duplicate Contacts under Duplicates and Merging.
The same rules apply when you merge duplicate organizations, except where noted.
How a Merge Moves Records
After you confirm a merge, Rhythm runs it in the background in three main steps:
- Find. Rhythm finds every record, in every Rhythm application, that points to one of the contacts you are merging away.
- Move. Each application points its own records to the surviving contact, or deletes a record when the surviving contact already has an equivalent one.
- Remove. After every application finishes moving its records, Rhythm deletes the merged-away contacts.
flowchart LR
A[Choose the surviving contact] --> B[Rhythm finds every record\nthat points at the others]
B --> C[Each application repoints\nor combines its own records]
C --> D[The merged-away contacts\nare deleted]
Warning
If any one application fails during its part of the merge, the merge stops at that point. Records that other applications already moved stay moved, the merged-away contacts are not deleted, and you see a failure even if the merge looked routine at first. Rhythm does not retry the merge automatically or roll back records that already moved. If a merge fails partway through, contact Support with the contacts involved so the records can be checked and finished by hand.
Tip
Each application moves its own records in the background, so merging a large group of duplicates can take noticeably longer than merging one pair. This is especially common during a bulk deduplication effort, and the work may occasionally time out. If a batch of merges is not finishing in a reasonable time, work through smaller groups of duplicates instead.
Records That Simply Move
Most records that name a merged-away contact are updated to name the surviving contact instead. The record itself does not change, so its dates, status, and other details stay the same. This is the default behavior for records in other Rhythm applications, unless one of the more specific rules below applies to that record type.
Some related history does not reliably follow this rule. If a contact's event registrations or committee associations were imported without the underlying relationship data, a later merge has nothing to point to the surviving contact, so that history does not move. Email records tied to the merged-away contact can also fail to come over, whether or not both contacts shared the same email address. Accreditation-linked records are the least predictable because standard merge logic does not always reconcile evaluation, candidacy, or team-member history tied to a deleted or legacy contact ID. Some historical accreditation evaluations are not represented in the merge tool's mapping at all, and a site visit's team-member information is not guaranteed to become usable again after the merge. If related history appears to be missing after a merge, contact Support so the records can be checked.
Warning
If one of the contacts you are merging has accreditation evaluation or candidacy history, the merge can show an error message even when it completes successfully and includes the accreditation information. If you see an error on a merge involving accreditation history, check the surviving contact's records before assuming the merge failed.
Merging a contact does not move Auth0 login associations tied to the merged-away record. If the merged-away contact had signed in to the portal, those credentials do not automatically carry over to the surviving contact. This can cause portal sign-in problems, including a prompt to create a new contact record. A merged contact or organization can also keep a stale reference to its own previous Auth0 profile. If someone cannot complete account setup after a merge, that stale reference is often the cause, and removing the old profile resolves it.
Records That Combine Instead of Simply Moving
Some records are not only pointed to the surviving contact. When the surviving contact and a merged-away contact both have one of these records, Rhythm combines them into a single record instead of keeping two:
| Record kind | What happens when both records have one |
|---|---|
| Membership | Rhythm keeps the surviving contact's membership. It adds any chapters from the merged-away contact's membership to the surviving membership, then deletes the merged-away membership. For organizations, any child memberships that pointed to the source organization's membership are updated to point to the surviving one. |
| Certification | Rhythm combines certifications by program. When both contacts have a certification in the same program, Rhythm keeps the surviving contact's certification and deletes the other one. Any certification applications that belonged to the deleted certification move to the certification that survives. |
| Accreditation team candidacy | Rhythm combines candidacies by program in the same way: one candidacy per program survives, and the other is deleted. |
| A one-to-one profile (for example, a speaker profile in Events or an employer profile in Careers) | If both contacts have a profile, Rhythm keeps the surviving contact's own profile and discards the other one. Nothing from the merged-away contact's profile carries over. If only the merged-away contact has a profile, Rhythm moves it to the surviving contact. |
| Donor record | Rhythm moves the merged-away contact's donor record to the surviving contact, under a new identifier tied to the surviving contact. When you merge organizations, the surviving organization's donor history combines amounts from both records, so cash donations recorded against the merged-away organization appear under the survivor. |
| Security tab login history | Rhythm keeps only the surviving contact's own security and login history. Login history recorded on the merged-away contact is not added to it, even if both contacts show login activity before the merge. |
| Records whose own identifier is built from the contact (for example, an event session registration) | Rhythm re-creates the record under an identifier built from the surviving contact, then removes the record under the old identifier. When you view the surviving contact's registrations for that session, you see one entry with the original details. |
If Rhythm finds only one of these records, such as a membership on the merged-away contact and no membership on the surviving contact, the record simply moves to the surviving contact like any other record.
Membership history is intended to merge over from both contacts, along with related transaction history, so you should not expect to lose that history when memberships combine. The membership data that remains is usually the data from the record you chose as the master contact when you started the merge. Before you confirm the merge, check that you have the correct master because the other record is deleted and cannot be retrieved afterward.
If one duplicate has the person's login and verified email while the other has the membership, merge the membership-holding contact into the login-holding one. That way, the surviving record keeps the login and gains the membership. You can use the same approach to fix a membership that landed on the wrong person record: if the correct contact had been made Inactive, change it back to Active first, then merge the incorrect record into it so the membership follows.
A contact's own identifiers can also look different after a merge. Contact number and contact ID are separate values, so it is normal after a merge for a contact to show one value where you expected the other. Keep this distinction in mind when you compare a contact's identity across Rhythm and connected systems such as Auth0 or Higher Logic. A mismatch between the two identifiers is often the result of a past merge, not a data error.
Attached Files
Files attached to either contact through Rhythm's standard file-attachment fields stay downloadable after the merge. Files from the merged-away contact and files from the surviving contact both remain reachable once the merge finishes. This includes files uploaded through a custom field of the File type.
What Rhythm Keeps from the Surviving Contact, Not the Merged-Away Contact
The surviving contact keeps its own record of which Rhythm application originally created it. If the merged-away contact was created by a different application, Rhythm does not copy that origin to the surviving contact. For example, a merged contact should no longer display a guest-registration banner that a merged-away, guest-created contact might have shown, because that origin is not copied over.
What Happens to the Merged-Away Contacts
After every application finishes moving its records, Rhythm deletes the merged-away contacts. Rhythm does not mark them as duplicates or leave empty placeholders behind. The contacts are removed outright, and you cannot undo a completed merge with a button.
Because the merged-away contact number no longer identifies a record, a query filter such as "Contact Number Is In List" will not match it. Use the surviving contact's number instead. Rhythm also does not provide a standard contact report or query to list merged records after the fact. A membership query built from snapshots can offer partial clues, but it mixes in unrelated data and will not give you a clean list of merged contacts. Treat reporting on merged records as something Rhythm does not currently offer, not something you can configure.
For a short time after a merge, universal search can still show a result for the merged-away contact's name alongside the surviving contact. Both results display the surviving contact's ID. If you open the merged-away name's result, Rhythm returns "contact not found." This clears up on its own and does not mean the merge failed.
Related Records May Take a Minute or Two
Rhythm announces a completed contact merge so other applications can react, but only after every application's records have already been moved. In practice, the records you can see directly in Rhythm are already correct when the merge finishes. Another application's own internal bookkeeping may take a short time to catch up, which the Console describes as "a minute or two."
Organization merges are not announced in the same way, but they otherwise combine and move records the same way contact merges do.
Merges Always Start from a Staff Member's Request
Every contact merge you see in Rhythm is one a staff member started deliberately. They either selected specific duplicates to merge or resolved a suggested duplicate pair. Rhythm does not currently merge two contacts on its own in response to another event.
Related
See "Related" in the sidebar for tasks that walk you through merging duplicate contacts and organizations, and for how a merge affects a record's activities and relationship history. For how the surviving record's own change history is kept, see Audit History: What Is Recorded and How to View It.