This article provides guidance on identifying and resolving duplicate guardian profiles in a school system to enhance communication and reduce costs. It details the steps for merging or deleting profiles, the necessary permissions, and the implications of these actions, emphasising that merges cannot be undone. It also addresses bulk actions and troubleshooting for unflagged duplicates.
You can identify and resolve suspected duplicate records for:
- student duplicates in preparation for DfE School Census
- guardian duplicates (shown below) to improve communication to guardians and save costs on avoiding to send multiple text messages to the same guardians
- staff duplicates in preparation for DfE School Workforce Census
Please note that once a profile merge has been carried out this cannot be undone, so be sure to carefully check the two profiles you intend to merge before carrying out the operation.
Permissions
You will need the School: General Admin: Administer permission to merge or delete guardian profiles. If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Merging or deleting guardian profiles
When the system has been able to identify a duplicate guardian, everyone with the School: General Admin: Administer permission (your admin team, Head Teachers and SLT by default) sees this in their To Do list on their homepage.
To resolve a duplicate guardian, click an unresolved suspected guardian duplicate item in your To Do list, or go to School > Data > Data Quality > Suspected Duplicates > Guardians.
On the Suspected Duplicates page for guardians, you see Unresolved and Resolved duplicates in separate tabs.
- On the Unresolved tab, Arbor colour-codes potential matches based on how many fields on both profiles are the same. Duplicates marked in red are most likely to be a match, and green duplicates are least likely to be a match. Clicking on a suspected duplicate opens a slide over, where you can see exactly which pieces of data match in the Comparison table.
- The Resolved tab shows an overview of previous suspected duplicates and their resolutions. Refer to the Resolution column to see if the duplicate record was resolved by merging two profiles, deleting a profile or keeping two profiles separate.
Please note: Arbor only checks whether a guardian potentially has two guardian profiles. If the guardian has a staff or student profile too, the system will not flag this as a duplicate profile.
Managing guardian duplicates
To merge or resolve two duplicate guardian profiles:
- Go to School > Data > Data Quality Dashboard > Suspected Duplicates > Guardians.
- Click the row that includes the guardians you would like to merge.
- Review the information in the Comparison Table on the slide over to help with choosing a resolution. Navigate to a specific profile by clicking the grey Go to Guardian A/B buttons, if needed.
- For further information on what each resolution does, click the red Which Resolution Should I Use? box.
- When you're ready, choose your Resolution using the dropdown:
- Merge guardian B into guardian A - blank fields in Guardian A will be filled by information from Guardian B and if conflicting information exists for a field, the information from Guardian A and Guardian B will be kept
- Merge guardian A into guardian B - blank fields in Guardian B will be filled by information from Guardian A and if conflicting information exists for a field, the information from Guardian B and Guardian A will be kept
- Delete guardian A - deletes all data associated with the first profile
- Delete guardian B - deletes all data associated with the second profile
- Keep records separate - nothing is changed and there will continue to be two separate profiles.
Top Tip: Not sure which guardian profile is most recent? Any students linked to the guardian who are currently enrolled will have their registration form in brackets next to their name.
- Once you've decided on and set a resolution, click Resolve
- Click Resolve on the pop-up too to confirm the changes
The resolved duplicates will then move to the Resolved tab.
Deleting guardians with no linked children in bulk
To see guardians not linked to any students, go to School > Data > Data Quality Dashboard > Guardians > Guardians with no linked students.
To delete guardians to take them off your site:
- Tick the boxes next to their names
- Click the Bulk action button.
- Select Delete Guardian Records
- Confirm the deletion with the red Delete button
This process cannot be reversed, so make sure this is the correct course of action.
If you do not want to delete a parent/guardian, you can also link them to a student instead with these steps:
- Click their name to open the slide over
- Go to their profile by clicking their name on the slide over, too
- Go to the Linked Students section and click +Add
- Select the student, their relationship to the guardians and other details
- Press Link Student to confirm
Deleting a single guardian
You'll need to do this from their guardian profile. This process cannot be reversed, so make sure this is the correct course of action.
To delete a single guardian:
- Head to their profile
- Scroll down to the bottom of their main profile page
- Click Delete guardian outright in the yellow Admin section
- Click the red Delete guardian button on the slide over
- Click Yes, delete guardian on the pop-up
FAQ
How often should we check for duplicates?
We advise schools to continue checking the Suspected duplicates section in their Data quality dashboard as often as possible. This is to prevent future issues from occurring with guardian, staff and student accounts.
To access this area, you will need to go to School > Data > Data Quality > Dashboard> Suspected duplicates
Can we delete profiles in bulk?
It is not possible to delete profiles in bulk from the Duplicates page or anywhere else. Profiles cannot be restored once deleted, so it's very important you check a deletion is needed on a per-case basis.
Can we merge profiles in bulk?
No, it is not possible to merge profiles in bulk. Profiles cannot be un-merged so it's very important you check a merge is needed for each potential duplicate that is flagged.
Can we keep records separate in bulk?
Yes you can - just tick the boxes next to the profiles you want to keep separate. Click the Bulk action button to select Bulk set as 'Keep separate'.
They'll then show in the Resolved tab.
Someone is a duplicate but isn't flagging as one
If you're sure that two guardians are duplicates but aren't being identified as duplicates, make sure that their names are identical. Please note that if a user has a guardian and a staff profile, these do not count as duplicates.
Go to the profile that has the incorrect name, and change their name to exactly match the name on the other profile.
If they're not flagging on the Data Quality Dashboard, be sure to check the Resolved tab to see if someone mistakenly chose to keep the profiles separate.
Can I undo the resolution I chose?
- If you have merged or deleted profiles, this cannot be changed.
- If you have chosen to keep records separate, you can change the resolution.
Click the Resolved tab and select the resolved duplicates. In the slide-over, you can then select a new resolution.
Whilst the merge itself can't be reversed, if the wrong profiles were merged, you can raise a ticket asking Support to run an audit of what moved from the deleted profile, then use that to manually recreate it. Please note, we will not be able to roll back your system and recover a merged profile; you will still need to manually rebuild the profile. More on who can request audits here: Requesting an Audit of site activity
A parent can't log in - do I have to merge the duplicate profiles?
No. The login block is caused by two profiles sharing the same email address, not by a profile appearing on the Suspected Duplicates list. If you are not certain two people are the same person, do not merge; instead, remove or correct the email address on the wrong profile, or set the pair to "Keep separate". Merging cannot be undone. If you want to check for duplicate email addresses, head to School > Data > Data Quality > Dashboard > Suspected Duplicates> Email Addresses.
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