What's changing?

We're making changes to how merges are handled for contact and company records to make them more consistent with merges for other object types.

Currently, when contacts or companies are merged, the record ID of the primary record is used for the resulting merged record. Going forward, a new record with a new ID will be created for the resulting merged record, with both records merged into the new one. Similar to the previous merge functionality, both of the previous IDs will point to the resulting merged record, so fetching any records using the original IDs will return the new merged record with the new ID. If you work with contact or company records, you will want to make sure you handle the case where an existing record ID can return a new merged record ID.

Previously, the value for any property would be determined by the most recent timestamp for the latest update to that property from the merged records. With the new behavior, the property values of the resulting merged record will use the latest property values of the primary record as the current value. Property values from both objects will still be merged onto the new object.

Previously, contact merges with property values with the same name and timestamp from both records would have their timestamps adjusted. This will no longer happen, and only values from the primary will be kept.

Note: Contact and company properties that already have exceptions to existing behavior as detailed in our help documentation for merging records will keep their special behavior.

Additionally, associations from the primary record will be prioritized for the resulting merged record. When there are multiple associations with "primary" labels for the same object type, the merged record will prioritize associations from the primary record, and excess "primary" associations from secondary records will be dropped.

Why is this changing?

These changes bring contacts and companies in line with the merge functionality of other CRM objects, so that merges for all objects will work in a similar way. In addition to making it easier to handle merges for all objects, this also makes it easier to add new options for record merges in the future.

When is this changing?

The new merge functionality will begin affecting new merges beginning on October 21, 2024. This change will only affect records merged after this update, and existing records that have been merged will not be changed.

Please let us know if you have any questions by joining our discussion in the community.