I have found an old thread regarding this and was hoping to get some up to date information:
In a multi-user environment, when 2 or more users have the same contact in their address book, DL creates multiple instances of the same person (contact). This is very confusing when linking a contact to a project etc. Is there a way to have only one instance of a contact that DL, and therefore each user, references.


Thanks

If you ended up with two duplicate contacts in Daylite, you can combine them to have them as 1 contact in Daylite.

If you're on 3.5+ and work with sync services to sync with your Address Books, this should then be replicated to there as well, but this can sometime get tricky depending on how and where the contacts were created.

To combine two contacts, select the two, then Edit -> Combine 2 contacts, then select which should be the Master (usually the one with the most information).

Fausto.
There is no restriction to prevent different user A and user B entering a contact record for the same person.
This person will appear twice in the database yes.
However each instance of the same person will be owned by a different user.

When either user (A or B) views the database in "My contacts" you will only see 1 instance of the person.
If they view the database in "Contacts" they will see both.
If you use the "Locate Duplicate Duplicate" option to de-dupe the database the resulting combined contact will have to be owned by either user A or B.
You have to decide who owns the record because the ownership controls when the contact appears in "My Contacts" view.
At the present time Daylite does not support multiple owners for records.

Perhaps the best way forward would be to quickly search for the last name of a contact before entering it?

I do hope this helps you out a bit.

Thanks for the replies,

Using multiple instances of the same contact with different owners, what happens when I want to link a contact to a project; when I would search for the contact to link, does the system search all contacts, or just those owned by me? If it's all contacts, how do I differentiate between my contact and those owned by others?

With 5 users in our office, and many of our contacts being shared, this system leaves alot to be desired.

When "combine duplicates" and the second one is deleted, then from my understanding, the owner of the second contact now has none, and must manually select the "include in sync contacts list". But what if they don't know it has happened... they loose their contact.

It would be nice that when your "combine duplicates" that rather than deleting the second instance of the contact, the system should link the remaining contact with the second user automatically via the "include in sync contacts list" button.
Thanks

In real life there is only one instance of "Fausto" and thus it must be in Daylite. If your users enter duplicates then you should tell them not to. Form the habit of checking if the contact already exists before creating it. And if dups are created, then combine them as soon as you detect it.

When combining - select the appropriate "master" record. The master is the one that remains - the other is deleted.

We'll address that "include in sync list" problem in a future release.

We really need a feature that allows you to combine all activities and contact info of the duplicates together, not just delete one record with lots of information. This is a huge problem for us and takes a lot of time manually to merge records.

Hi,
I do agree. I find that not only do you loose the information, but you also need to coordinate with the "owner" of the duplicate to ensure they check the sync button so as not to "loose" their contact.
Maybe I'm not following the best procedure, but that's why I started this thread in the first place.