How Scanning Works#

Dedupify finds duplicates through two complementary mechanisms: a full background scan that runs when you activate 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. Starting — 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.

Getting a Fresh Full Scan#

A match rule’s matching criteria can only be edited while the rule is turned off — turning it back on reactivates it, and reactivation queues a new full background scan of every record for that object type, the same way the initial scan runs.

This covers the situations where you’d want a fresh full pass:

  • You imported a large batch of records and want them evaluated immediately: turn the rule off and back on to requeue a full scan.
  • You changed a matching rule: editing requires turning it off first, so turning it back on to save your changes already queues the fresh scan the new criteria need.
  • You want to confirm there are no missed duplicates after a period of heavy data entry: same off/on cycle.

To do this, open the rule in Matching Rules, turn it off, then turn it back on.

What Does Not Trigger a Scan#

There is no nightly or scheduled full re-scan of all records. The only trigger for a full scan is activating a rule — including reactivating it after turning it off to edit or as a manual retrigger.

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