In rare cases, a Contact may have more than one Participant record. This situation may result from users who create a new Participant record with the New action from the Participants page and assign the new Participant to a Contact that already has one. It may also happen when someone edits a Participant record and changes the Contact it's assigned to and selects a new Contact that already has a Participant record.
To avoid this situation in the future, users should be trained search for the individual on the Contacts page, launch the Add/Edit Family Tool for that individual and then click Save. This creates a Participant record for that individual if one doesn't already exist.
A nightly data quality routine looks for this scenario. When one is found, the Contact record is duplicated, the additional Participant record associated with the new record is created, and a "Duplicate of" relationship is added to tie both records together. You can then use the Combine Contacts tool to merge the duplicates.
Once completed, all Groups, Events, Responses and Milestones are transferred to the remaining Participant record. If the Participant is in two identical Groups with the same Group Role, these records are combined so only the oldest remains.
