Identity resolution and golden records

A ruleset unifies one object, Individual (people) or Account (companies), inside one data space. It produces:

• a unified DMO: the golden record, holding reconciled attributes and no source data;
• a link DMO: one row per source record, pointing to its unified record, so you can traverse from source to unified and back.

Rules

Kind	Options	Use for accounts, people and orders
Match rules (any rule matching links records)	Exact on any field; fuzzy on names; normalized on email, phone and address	People: fuzzy first name + exact last name + normalized email, then normalized phone + exact last name. Accounts: exact account number, then normalized name + normalized billing address or phone
Reconciliation rules (which value the golden record keeps)	Last updated, most frequent (null is never chosen), source priority (your source order)	Contact points: last updated. Names: source priority with CRM first. Account type and industry: most frequent

Order data is never unified itself. Orders join to golden records through the link DMOs (reference/data360/insights-and-data-graphs.md).

Objects created

Ruleset object	Unified DMO	Link DMO
Individual	UnifiedIndividual__dlm	IndividualIdentityLink__dlm (Salesforce's Trailhead SQL)
Account	Unified Account	UnifiedLinkssotAccount__dlm (per a community guide)

With a second ruleset, the ruleset ID is appended to the names; the Salesforce workshop's object is "Unified Individual ccid". Resolve the names at run time by listing DMOs, as guides/data360/automate-the-golden-record-pipeline.md does.

API

Call	Endpoint (under /services/data/v66.0/ssot)
List or create rulesets	GET / POST /identity-resolutions
Read, update or delete one	GET / PATCH / DELETE /identity-resolutions/{id}. Every item endpoint is keyed by ID, per the community plugin
Run now	POST /identity-resolutions/{id}/actions/run-now

• The create body's fields are label, description, configurationType (the object), rulesetId, matchRules, reconciliationRules (required) and doesRunAutomatically, per Salesforce's Connect API reference.
• The nested shapes of match criteria and reconciliation rules didn't render for the hub. Capture them from a working org instead of writing them by hand:

1. Build the ruleset once in the UI.
2. Run GET /identity-resolutions/{id}.
3. Drop id, status and run fields, and commit the JSON.
4. POST it to other orgs.

guides/data360/automate-the-golden-record-pipeline.md does this. Data kits are the supported alternative (reference/data360/automation-and-data-kits.md).

• Reading status: responses carry status, lastRunStatus and matchedRate (field names seen by the community plugin). Poll until the last run succeeded. A first run "can take up to 30 minutes", per Salesforce's workshop.

Limits

These are from a community guide (2025). Check the current Data 360 limits page before you design around them:

• 2 rulesets per data model object per data space;
• on-demand runs up to 4 times per 24 hours per ruleset;
• scheduled runs every 24 hours by default, skipped when nothing changed.

Each run consumes Data 360 credits (family 10).

Measure the golden records

SELECT COUNT(*) AS source_records, COUNT(DISTINCT l.UnifiedRecordId__c) AS golden_records
FROM IndividualIdentityLink__dlm l

• The consolidation rate is 1 - golden_records / source_records. Track it per run; a sudden jump usually means an over-broad match rule.
• Field names on link DMOs vary with the ruleset. UnifiedRecordId__c is the hub's reading of the Trailhead query. Confirm the names with GET /ssot/data-model-objects/{link DMO} before relying on this SQL.

Failures

Symptom	Cause → fix
Unified DMO missing or empty	The ruleset hasn't run, or the run failed. Read lastRunStatus, then run now
Run-now refused	The daily on-demand limit was reached. Wait for the scheduled run
Unrelated people merged	A match rule on a shared value (a company switchboard number, a generic email). Remove it or combine it with a name match
Duplicates not merged	Contact points aren't mapped (Contact Point Email or Phone), or normalization doesn't apply to that field
Account ruleset finds nothing	The Account mappings it needs are missing, or the account DLO isn't profile data (reference/data360/streams-and-mapping.md)
SQL fails on the unified name	A second ruleset changed the object names. Re-resolve them