Searching duplicate cases

1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Case types, and then click the case type that you want to open.
2. In the case working area, on the Workflow tab, click Life cycle.
3. In a process to which you want to add a Search duplicate cases shape, click StepMoreAutomationsSearch duplicate cases.
4. Click Select.

Result: Your case type now includes a Search duplicate cases shape, as shown in the following figure.

What to do next: Define conditions that potential duplicate cases must match:

• Define the basic conditions. For more information, see Defining basic conditions for case types.
• Define a threshold with weighted conditions. For more information, see Defining a threshold with weighted conditions for a case type.

Defining basic conditions for case types

Improve the performance of your duplicate case search and limit the number of potential duplicates by defining basic conditions for potential duplicate cases.

Defining a threshold with weighted conditions for a case type

Improve the performance of your duplicate case search and limit the number of potential duplicates by defining weighted conditions for a potential duplicate case. Determine whether the case is a potential duplicate by assigning a relative weight to each condition, and by calculating the total weight of a case.

Before you begin: Add a Search duplicate cases shape to the life cycle of your case type. For more information, see Searching duplicate cases.

1. In the navigation pane of App Studio, click Case types, and then click the case type that you want to open.
2. In the case working area, on the Workflow tab, click Life cycle.
3. In the Case life cycle section, click the Search duplicate cases step for which you want to define the weighted conditions.
4. In the step property panel, click Add weighted condition.
5. In the dialog box that appears, in the Weight field, enter a value between 1 and 100 that you want to add to the total weight of a case when the case meets the condition.
   For example: When you create three conditions with the weight of 20 each, the total weight is 60.
   Note: If you want the application to display additional information in the notification about duplicate cases, include the properties that contain that information as columns in a version of the pyCaseMatchProcessingTemplate report definition that applies to the class of your case type. For more information, see Optimizing database properties.
6. In the Potential duplicate, Comparator, and Current case fields, enter the property names and values that you want to use to determine duplicates in a comparison against the existing cases.
   The application uses these values to compare existing cases against the current case to identify potential duplicates.
   For example: In a hotel booking application, to compare your case with all cases that contain the same room number, enter Room number is equal to 1006.
7. Click OK.
8. Optional: To add more weighted conditions, repeat steps 4 through 7.
9. In the And weighted conditions sum at least field, enter a sum of weights that represents a threshold when the case is a potential duplicate.
   Tip: The threshold value should be lower than the sum of all weighted conditions.
10. Click Save.

Result: At run time, the application evaluates the conditions that have different weights to determine which cases are likely to be duplicates. Users can decide whether to close a case as a duplicate or ignore the potential duplicate and continue. A dialog box provides the reason for marking the case as a potential duplicate, which helps users make an informed decision.

Note: Only simple match scores are shown in the dialog box. The Date time and Date property types are complex match scores and do not display the values. However, the total score contribution of complex matches is shown in the Other conditions section at the bottom of the dialog box, so the lack of display has no impact on duplicate case evaluation.

For example: The following figure shows a sample configuration for finding duplicate cases at a hotel booking application. The configuration includes a basic condition that searches for cases with the same email, and three weighted conditions that cover dates of arrival and a departure, and a room number. At run time, an application marks a case as a duplicate when the email is the same as in a case that already exists, and then weighted conditions that evaluate to true have total value of at least 50.

The following video shows how to add a Search duplicate cases step to a case life cycle, and then define basic and weighted conditions: