PeopleSoft provides on-line and batch processes to search for the existence of a person prior to creating a new record (and potential duplicate).
Search/Match is an extremely powerful feature in PeopleSoft. At Cornell it is primarily used for maintaining the integrity of the database. Users from many departments enter data into PeopleSoft increasing the chances of duplicate entities. To minimize the entry of duplicates PeopleSoft's Search/Match functionality is the utilized as the primary search engine.Even though there are several search/match rules in the system there are only a few records can be used by Search/Match:
Record Name |
PS_ADDRESSES |
PS_EMAIL_ADDRESSES |
PS_EXTERNAL_SYSTEM |
PS_EXT_ORG_TBL |
PS_HRS_APP_ADDRESS |
PS_HRS_APP_EMAIL |
PS_HRS_APP_NAMES |
PS_HRS_APP_PHONE |
PS_NAMES |
PS_ORG_LOCATION |
PS_PERSON |
PS_PERSONAL_PHONE |
PS_PERS_DATA_EFFDT |
PS_PERS_NID |
Cornell Uses Search/Match in both, online transaction processing and batch processing. In both cases the possible matches are reported back to the user in a predefined result table format. The user then makes a decision as to whether a new ID needs to be generated. Search/Match is only as reliable as the underlying data used in its processes. If there is a delay in the data synchronization rules between applications the risk of duplicates increases. A process should be defined and maintained for cleaning up duplicates.