Why Duplicate Detection job is impractical

Idea of Duplicate Detection Jobs of Dynamics 365 is with great value. It allows you to monitor the number of Duplicate records in a given time: so necessary action could be taken.

Setting a job is very easy because it allows you to select the entity (type with a Duplicate Detection Rules are set) and mention which View is selected to run against. Most importantly scheduling is possible. Once you schedule it, you will get a new report after each execution.

This is where frustration starts. For example, I am trying to monitor how fast duplicate Contacts are being grown by checking a report every week. Below is a sample report. D365 instance I am monitoring already got thousands of duplicates.

First I was surprised to see number 12. Then I realized, 12 is nothing, but the number of records showing in this page. (at least it could have been 10!, what is 12 anyway..)  Then I had to click next and go on. The simple mistake in this window is, it doesn’t show the total number. For me, it was a hectic task click next again and again to check the number of records.

Anyway, I ended up writing a console application to read the number of records in the report. Below is the Fetch Xml I used for it. May be this will help you too.

<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false" >
    <entity name="duplicaterecord" >
        <attribute name="duplicateid" />
        <attribute name="createdon" />
        <order attribute="createdon" descending="true" />
        <filter type="and" >
            <condition attribute="createdon" operator="on-or-after" value="2020-07-03" />
            <condition attribute="createdon" operator="on-or-before" value="2020-07-06" />
        </filter>
        <link-entity name="asyncoperation" from="asyncoperationid" to="asyncoperationid" >
            <attribute name="name" />
            <attribute name="createdon" />
            <filter type="and" >
                <condition attribute="name" operator="like" value="%Weekly Duplicate Monitor Job: Active Contacts%" />
            </filter>
        </link-entity>
    </entity>
</fetch>