Merge Plan
What It Is
A merge plan is the administrator's working preview of combining several records into one. It gathers two to ten contacts or organizations, identifies the survivor and shows what the resulting record would contain. The plan exists before execution and gives staff a place to resolve differences without changing the underlying records. It can start from duplicate review, a record page or a manual selection.
The preview considers all participants together. It can recognize a value shared by several records, apply a collection limit across them and describe related work that must move. This gives a more complete view than deciding a succession of pairwise merges. It distinguishes proposed choices, automatic combinations and blockers so that a person can inspect the entire consequence before asking for execution.
What It Is Not
The plan is neither a completed merge nor a permanent account of changed records. Its preview can change as records or answers change. An abandoned open plan expires. Nor does the plan establish that its participants are duplicates: staff can plan manually selected records, and they remain responsible for that identity judgment.
How It Is Used
Administrators inspect the participant summaries and the recommended survivor, then decide whether that identity should remain. They answer questions about incompatible values, review automatic results and inspect the information that will be discarded. Related-record actions explain consequences beyond the main record, including another application's participant changes. Confirmation follows review of the complete preview.
A plan has its own address so staff can return to unfinished work. Changes require the stored version previously read. When another administrator updates the plan, an outdated decision is refused rather than replacing that work. Reading an open plan may itself refresh the stored preview. A chosen source value that changes remains attached to its record but requires renewed confirmation.
Its Facets
Participants and survivor identify the records being combined and the one retaining identity. Summaries describe their dates, status, type and related information. Survivor recommendation ranks login, integration, reference and age signals, explains the result and leaves the administrator free to choose differently.
Questions and answers capture choices among values already present, including clearing an optional field. Their attribution records who made each decision. Automatic combinations expose results that do not need a choice, such as restricted consent or equivalent details. Related-record actions describe what moves, combines or remains unchanged across CRM and other applications.
Blockers and warnings distinguish conditions that prevent execution from cautions that deserve attention. Discarded values make omissions visible and explain their cause. Approval binding connects execution to the participants and related-row identities and versions in the last reviewed preview. Status and expiry distinguish work needing answers, readiness, blocking, execution and abandonment.
How It Relates
Possible duplicates provide a common reason to start planning. Entities supplies the contacts, organizations and affiliations compared by the planner. Each application owns the functions describing and applying its related changes. An approved plan produces an execution attempt; failure preserves the plan's decisions so it can be reviewed and attempted again.
What It Could Become
The product should settle whether shared administrator editing is the intended collaboration model. It should also resolve deletion of old working copies, since expiry currently closes plans without removing their retained personal values. A console list of unfinished plans would make handover and recovery easier. Strong approval binding remains the foundation for any later scheduling or collaboration features.