Finding Duplicate Items

Windchill RV&S includes functionality for detecting duplicate items within the Windchill RV&S database. Duplicate detection allows you to:

Duplicate detection is enabled by your Windchill RV&S administrator and applies to all items of the specified type. For each type, the search for duplicates is carried out on a short text field that is also defined by the administrator.

If your administrator makes duplicate detection mandatory for the item type you are creating, you must view a list of potential duplicates (in the Potential Duplicates View) before saving the new item. If you try to save the item without first viewing the list, a message displays.

In the Windchill RV&S client GUI, you can also customize your ViewSet to manage the Potential Duplicates View.

To control the display of the view, choose ViewSet > Customize. Under the Views tab, choose from one of the available display options for Potential Duplicates View (Left, Right, Top, Bottom, or Floating).

To display the View Potential Duplicates menu command in the Items menu, choose ViewSet > Customize. Under the Actions tab, select the Workflows and Documents action group, and then click the Item node. Under the Action Availability column, set View Potential Duplicates to Visible.

• To identify existing duplicates, duplicate detection must first be enabled for the item type you want to search. For more information, contact your Windchill RV&S administrator.

• Duplicate item searches are limited to items of the same Windchill RV&S type that you are creating (or searching for).

• Only the text you enter in the defined search field (for example, the Summary field) is used as the basis for the search. The search field is defined by your Windchill RV&S administrator. On the GUI and Web interfaces, the

icon adjacent to a text field indicates that this is the field being used for a duplicates search.

• When searching for duplicates, Windchill RV&S returns 20 items by default.

• When viewing item details in the Potential Duplicates View through the Web interface, item links contained in rich content fields are not active.

• Duplicate detection works best when you enter multiple words in the defined search field. A search based on a single word may not return any results. When running in a non-Japanese locale, duplicate detection also ignores short words (that is, words with only one or two letters).

• You are only shown duplicate items from projects that are visible to you. If a duplicate item is contained in a project that is not visible to you, Windchill RV&S does not display that item in the search results.