Question

Photo of Jon Horton

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Preventing duplicates when using Facebook authentication

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I'm currently investigating using Facebook authentication for people to sign into Rock. I love the ease of creating an account this method provides, but it appears that unless the email address on file is an exact match, the system will inevitably create duplicates. 


I'm curious to hear from those of you who use Facebook auth how you handle the duplicates and if there are any best practices you have for matching people.

Additionally, I'd love to know if any data exists on how many people choose to sign in with Facebook vs creating a standard username/password account.


Thanks in advance!

  • Photo of Aaron Porter

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    Hey Jon!

    Rock comes with some handy data integrity tools we use a lot to help weed out and merge duplicate records. Every week, we have someone check the Duplicate Finder and look at a data view that lists all people with a connection status of 'Web Prospect'. They'll check and make sure they don't already have profile and merge it if they do.

    As for finding the Facebook vs data base accounts: The quick and easy way would be to go to Admin Tools -> Security -> User Accounts and apply some filters. All Facebook accounts will have a username that starts with 'FACEBOOK_'.

    Hope this helps! Fun fact, I just discovered we have over 450 logins on our Rock server. =O


    • Jon Horton

      Jon Horton

      Thanks for the answer Aaron!


      How do you confirm profiles are the same person when the email addresses may be different between the FB profile vs the Rock profile?


      How many duplicates are you merging per week?

      • Aaron Porter

        Aaron Porter

        The confirmation process varies. Since we only use our external site for online giving and contribution statements we often will get a call from the person trying to access their information. If we're ever not sure we tend to leave it still until we get more info to work on. However, like I said, we often hear from them if they can't access their online statements.


        I can't give you an accurate number. I'd say 1-3 on a normal week. When we do a big push for people to get online it can range from 5-15. I wish Rock would require Facebook and Google accounts to complete their profile (address, phone number) when they first sign in to make duplicates easier to catch.