My buddy Steve Caldwell and I came up with a simple work around that takes about 5 minutes to implement and doesn’t cost a dime. Rest assured, your org will still find a way to enter duplicate contacts, they always do, but this should help save some of your time and sanity.

1. Create A Unique ID Field

Create a text field (allow about 20 characters) and name it Unique ID. Make it read-only and don’t add it to any page layouts. Be sure you mark the field as a Unique ID field.

2. Create a Workflow

Now create a workflow that runs anytime a contact is created or edited. Assign a Field Update action to that workflow that combines the First Name and Last Name into one string in the Unique ID field. (John Smith unique id = johnsmith).

3. Update All Contacts

You’ll want to run the rule once to a. populate all the Unique ID fields and b. pull a list of existing duplicates. If you use the Apex Data Loader, this is really easy to do. Simply run a report that includes all of your contacts. You’ll only need to include the Contact ID column in this report. Then turn around and run an update through the Data Loader using that same list. Wa-lah! You’ve just updated all your contacts to have a Unique ID and your error report contains a list of existing duplicates you can go clean up.

4. Salesforce Administrator Triumphs

The next time a user tries to create a contact with the same first and last name as an existing contact, they’ll receive an error message that the Unique ID already exists and won’t be able to save.

This little trick should work for most objects you need to prevent dups on (leads, opportunities, custom objects, etc). If you run into multiple contacts with the same name, you may need to do something a bit more sophisticated or check the App Exchange for some paid solutions.

For now though, a recap.

First TImers and Expo Reception

Sunday evening they held a short session on how to get the most out of Dreamforce. This was basically an overview of the guides and maps, some tips for getting the most out of the sessions, and an intro to some key players in organizing the event. It was a nice way to start the week.

Then we were off to the expo reception. I stopped by to chat with our friends from Genius, Jigsaw, and Instant Service and then started winding up and down the aisles to get a feel for who was there, what was new, and who would I need to be sure to spend some time with before the week was out.

Keynote: 1

The first keynote was by far the best. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, led the keynote which included the announcement of force.com sites and a reveal of Neil Young’s LincVolt project.

Off to the Sessions

After the keynote it was off to the sessions. I attended a session on AdWords that unfortunately didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. It also made me want to stand up and walk out of the room when the presentor claimed that organic SEO is a waste of time and resources.

We had some lunch with our Sr VP of Sales, Peter Grace, and helped him prepare for his own session based on our email campaign and reporting strategy. We were shocked to have a packed house of over 150 attendees, and very pleased with Peter’s presentation. We gave huge props to our buddies at Genius including a step-by-step demo of how their product works and then focused on how reporting and tracking throughout the sales process can help identify weaknesses and ways to help reps improve their close rate.

Foo Fighters and More Networking

After the sessions came the Dreamforce Gala featuring the Foo Fighters. Now this is not a concert I would buy a ticket for, I’m just not a huge fan, but the do put on an amazing show. Of coarse, loads of free liquor will make anyone seem incredibly entertaining…

Keynote 2

The second keynote featured some pretty cool stuff from Dell and some stuff that just confused us all. The whole theme of Dreamforce was cloud computing…and they were featuring some of their servers…so that was a head scratcher for us.

Sessions: Day 2

Lets just say I still didn’t see anything that totally blew me away.

Sessions: Day 3

There was no keynote on day 3, we just dove straight into the session. This was the day that rocked my world. I’m going to go into great detail here, I want to do that in individual blog posts, but what I saw was:

• All about Facebook: Ads, Ideas, Apps, anything from salesforce you want to expose to the masses
• Ideas: Dell and Starbucks featured their Ideas sites and explained how they use them, moderate them, and what makes their customers love them.
• Campaign Management through Salesforce: How Salesforce uses Salesforce to manage campaigns and track results.

Keep an eye out in the coming days for more info about these sessions.

All in all, Dreamforce was a great experience. I found out that we are doing something unique and innovative and that my skills are more marketable that I thought. It reassured me that I am doing my job of keeping up to date with my skillset and strategies. Even in an industry that doesn’t always support or encourage out-of-the-box strategies, we’re pushing the limits and so far its working for us.