How to avoid from creating duplicate xDB contacts

Question

I am working with Sitecore xDB contacts. We have contacts created from different sources like ListManager, Form, Email etc. Due to different sources, we see that contact with same email ID are duplicated and have different contact ID.

We have mergecontact logic also which merges contact.

We just want to avoid creating duplicate contacts. Can we keep single source as ListManager everywhere while creating contact?

Thanks

Answer 1

There is no way to ignore Source of identifier and use Contact ID only.

If you want to keep single source ListManager for all your identifiers, you need to modify your code which you use to identify contacts to always use ListManager source.

Is it a good idea? It depends. If you have a contact coming from List Manager with identifier [Source:ListManager][ID:[email protected]] and then random person fills the form on your website using same email address, you would end up with that random person being identified as the other user, which most probably it not the thing you want.

You should be careful while merging contacts and while exposing any identified contact data. But it depends on the business scenarios you have.