[Beta] Finding and merging duplicate accounts in the People hub

Sometimes the same person ends up with two accounts on your conference, for example because they logged in with a university email, but a colleague later added them as a co-author using a personal Gmail address. When that happens, their submissions, reviews, or registrations can end up scattered across both accounts.

Merging one account manually

If you already know two accounts belong to the same person, you can:

1. Select People at the top of the page.
2. Find the account you want to keep in the People list and select their name to expand it.
3. Select Merge an Account.
4. Enter the email address of the account you want to remove, then select Continue.

Whichever account is kept absorbs the other account's submissions, reviews, and registrations. The email address you type into the box is always the one that disappears, so never enter the address you actually want to keep.

Letting Ex Ordo find duplicates for you

You don't need to already suspect someone. Select People > Tools > Duplicate User Finder to see every pair of accounts that look like they might be the same person.

This runs automatically overnight, or you can select Run Scan Now for up to date results.

Each suggested pair shows two ratings:

• Confidence, how sure Ex Ordo is that the pair is the same person: High, Medium, or Low.
• Impact, whether merging would actually fix something:
  • Significant: both accounts hold real content (submissions or registrations). Their data may be genuinely split, and things can go wrong, for example emails reaching old inboxes.
  • Needs Review: the content sits in an account the person doesn't log into, so they may not be able to see their own submission.
  • Housekeeping: one of the two accounts is an empty leftover. Merging is tidy-up, not urgent.

Ex Ordo also shows the plain-language reasons for each suggestion, for example "matching names" or "same email domain," so you're never merging on a hunch.

To merge a suggested pair, select Keep this account under whichever account should survive, then confirm. As with a manual merge, the account you didn't choose is absorbed and removed, and the same failure cases can apply (for example, both accounts having a registration).

Undoing a merge

A merge can only be reverted within two weeks of when it happened. A revert can also be unavailable sooner than two weeks if the merge already failed, if it was already reverted once, if either account has since been anonymised, or if one of the two accounts no longer exists in a state that can be restored.

Select People > Tools > Merge History to see a recent merge, who ran it, and whether it succeeded.

If a merge was a mistake, select Revert next to it, then confirm with Revert merge. This restores the account that was removed, along with its records.

Merge History only lists merges made since this feature was released; anything merged before that time is not recorded here.

What if a merge fails?

Merges can fail. Two common reasons: both accounts hold a registration for the same person (a person can't have two), or one account is listed as a reviewer on a submission the other account authored (you can't review your own work). If this happens, a pop-up explains why and what to fix first, for example removing that person as a reviewer from their own submission before trying again.