How do I find duplicate contacts by nickname?

Question

Here's an example of a very common situation I have:

1. Database has a contact like this

   • first name: Robert
   • nick name: Bob
   • last name: Smith
   • email: [email protected]
   • ...

2. Event registration form receives a submission like this

   • first name: Bob
   • last name: Smith
   • email: [email protected]
   • ...

3. A duplicate contact is created because the first name values do not match.

When finding duplicate contacts, is there some way of getting Civi to notice that the first name of one contact is identical to the nick name of another contact?

As a workaround, I've tried adding the nick name field to public forms, but trust me you don't want to do this. It's funny seeing what people write when prompted for a nick name, but not so funny when you notice postal solicitations addressed to people like "The Dude Smith".

Answer 1

This isn't going to help now, but big-picture, there ought to be an aliasing system for names. This Nickname problem occurs for organizations in an even bigger way, and Legal Name won't match with Organization Name.

What ought to happen is that Nickname should be considered an alias of First Name, and you could have multiple aliases for it. Someone could set up a maiden name as an alias of the last name, for example. On the organization side, aliases for Organization Name could bypass all kinds of relationship chaos that happens when people set their Current Employer.

Answer 2

You can create a view only custom field that you set with a civicrm_post hook when contacts are created/edited. It has the value of nickname if nickname isn't null, else first_name. Use that field in your dedupe rule.

Answer 3

You can use a list of nicknames, like this one to find all contacts with a common name. Once you've found a list of "Andrew" first names, loop through each Andrew contact and find all of the "Andy" contacts plus "Andrew's" last name and email or phone number. From here, if you identify a duplicate, you can set the nickname for both contacts to the first name of the duplicate contact ("Andy") then run a Dedupe rule like this: Nickname + (Phone or Email). Here's the script I used to do this:

function setContactNicknames() {
    $nicknames = explode("\n", file_get_contents(__DIR__ . '/nicknames.csv'));

    foreach($nicknames as $rootNames) {
        $rootNameFound = null;
        $eachRoot = explode(',', $rootNames);

        foreach($eachRoot as $nickname) {
            if ($rootNameFound) {
                foreach($rootNameFound['values'] as $rootContact) {
                    $nickMatch = null;

                    if ($rootContact['email']) {
                        $nickMatch = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', [
                            'sequential' => 1,
                            'first_name' => "{$nickname}",
                            'last_name' => $rootContact['last_name'],
                            'email' => $rootContact['email']
                        ]);
                    }

                    if (!$nickMatch && $rootContact['phone']) {
                        $nickMatch = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', [
                            'sequential' => 1,
                            'first_name' => "{$nickname}",
                            'last_name' => $rootContact['last_name'],
                            'phone' => $rootContact['phone']
                        ]);
                    }

                    if ($nickMatch && $nickMatch['count']) {
                        $matchContact = $nickMatch['values'][0];
                        $setNickname = $matchContact['first_name'];

                        if ($rootContact['contact_id'] !== $matchContact['contact_id']) {
                            civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', [ 'id' => $rootContact['contact_id'], 'nick_name' => $setNickname, ]);
                            civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', [ 'id' => $matchContact['contact_id'], 'nick_name' => $setNickname, ]);

                            echo $rootContact['first_name'] . ' ' . $rootContact['contact_id'] . ' ';
                            echo $matchContact['first_name'] . ' ' . $matchContact['contact_id'] . ' ';                            
                        }
                    }
                } 

            } else {
                $searchName = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'get', [ 'sequential' => 1, 'first_name' => "{$nickname}", ]);

                if ($searchName['count']) {
                    $rootNameFound = $searchName;
                }
            }
        }
    } 
}

Answer 4

I'm testing this dedupe rule out. It must match both partial first name (3 characters) and last name and either email or phone.