How Scanning Works#

Dedupify finds duplicates through two complementary mechanisms: a full background scan that runs when you activate or update a rule, and continuous near-real-time monitoring that catches duplicates as your CRM changes.

A Dedupify match rule scanning, with a live progress indicator

A rule mid-scan, showing live progress.

Initial Scan#

Activating a match rule triggers a full background scan of all records for that object type. Dedupify works through every record in your portal and evaluates it against the rule.

The settings page shows scan progress with a status indicator as it moves through the stages:

  1. Queued — the scan is waiting to start.
  2. Scanning — records are being processed.
  3. Complete — the scan has finished. You will receive a notification when it completes.

Only one scan runs per portal at a time. If you activate rules for multiple object types in quick succession, the scans queue and run sequentially.

Near-Real-Time Monitoring#

After the initial scan completes, Dedupify watches for changes to your records continuously. When a contact, company, deal, or ticket is created, updated, deleted, or merged, Dedupify re-evaluates the affected records against your active rules and surfaces any new candidate pairs automatically.

This means you do not need to trigger a fresh scan every time a record changes — duplicates are caught as they appear.

Manual Rescan#

You can manually trigger a rescan from the rule editor at any time. This runs a new full scan of all records for that rule, starting from scratch.

Common reasons to rescan:

  • You imported a large batch of records and want an immediate full pass.
  • You changed a matching rule and want the updated rule applied across your entire dataset.
  • You want to confirm there are no missed duplicates after a period of heavy data entry.

To start a manual rescan, open the rule in Matching Rules, and use the rescan option in the rule editor.

What Does Not Trigger a Scan#

There is no nightly or scheduled full re-scan of all records. The only triggers for a full scan are:

  • Activating a rule (initial scan)
  • Manually starting a rescan from the rule editor

Near-real-time monitoring runs continuously between full scans, but it only re-evaluates records that have changed — it does not sweep unchanged records on a schedule.

Scan History#

To review past scan activity and results, see Activity & Audit.

Backward Object Settings: Survivorship & Safety Activity, Scans & Audit Forward