Unique identifiers
Overview
Ortto’s Unique identifiers enable users to manage the recognition of each individual person and organization record within their Ortto account’s customer data platform (CDP), including those integrated from data sources. These identifiers help Ortto distinguish between unique records and duplicates when importing people (contacts) and organizations.
Accessing unique identifiers
To access the unique identifier page, go to Settings > Customer data > Unique identifiers
Managing unique identifiers
The unique identifiers page allows users to:
How do unique identifiers work?
Ortto initially designates Email as the primary identifier for contacts, with no fallback identifier.
During the import of contacts, Ortto cross-references incoming records with those already present in your CDP. For instance, using the default criteria:
- Does the incoming person's Email match an existing record?
If no match is detected, the incoming contact is appended as a new record to your CDP. However, if a match is found, it will be merged based on the merge strategy you have chosen for that incoming data source.
Set unique identifiers
- Navigate to the Unique identifiers page.
- Choose up to two unique identifiers for each people and organization record, including an optional secondary identifier for both the primary and fallback identifiers. Options for identifiers include Ortto’s system fields, fields from integrated data sources, or custom fields.
- Eligible fields for unique identifiers must be text-type (string) or a phone number.
- Learn more about supported Field types.
- Use the Trash icon to remove the optional second identifier if needed.
TIP: Consider the following when selecting your unique identifiers:
- Evaluate how your chosen identifiers may impact imported records and your merge strategy. For example, if two records have different emails but match by phone number, setting the primary identifier to email without a fallback for phone number could result in both records being created.
- Reflect on how your chosen identifiers might affect matches for existing records. Could a chosen identifier be missing for some records, potentially leading to duplicates?
Set a secondary field for an identifier
For fields like Email, contacts often have multiple email addresses recorded. They may use different emails for various interactions, such as work, personal, or new work addresses. By using a secondary field, you can match one incoming email against two different fields in your existing contacts.
For instance, you have the main Email field and an additional Secondary email field. To handle this, you would set Email as your primary key. Then, under Check against another field, select Secondary email.
Imagine you have a contact with the primary email lucy@locksmithlucy.com and a secondary email lucy.s@gmail.com. Whenever you import a CSV file, send an API request, or sync data from sources like Salesforce or Pipedrive, both the email and secondary email fields of existing records will be checked for a match. This ensures that whether the record comes in with lucy@locksmithlucy.com or lucy.s@gmail.com, it will be correctly identified and updated accordingly.
NOTE: Using a secondary field differs from using the fallback key. In our example, if you set Secondary email as the fallback key, we would check the incoming contact's Secondary email against your existing contacts' Secondary email field. However, if the incoming record mistakenly places the secondary email in the primary email field, it won't find a match.
You can add a secondary field for the primary or fallback key, for both the contact and organization identifiers.