Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching by maebeale · Pull Request #1854 · rubyforgood/awbw

maebeale · 2026-06-22T12:03:15Z

🤖 suggested review level: 3 Read 📖 contained duplicate-check change — widened matching logic + reverted blocking, covered by request specs

What is the goal of this PR and why is this important?

Two people can legitimately share an email, so an exact name + secondary/user email match should warn, not block. Only an exact name + primary email match blocks creation.
Duplicate detection should catch a match across the full set of identity fields the form captures, not just first name + primary email.

How did you approach the change?

blocked: is now primary_email_match only. Exact name + secondary/user email is an "approximate" match: orange warning badge + note, with "Create anyway" available.
Widened find_duplicate_people to consider legal first name (entered and stored, plus nickname variants) and the entered secondary email — so a match is caught regardless of which name/email pair lines up. New exact_first_name_match? helper decides exact-vs-nickname across first + legal forms.
Passed the new fields through both create and check_duplicates, and carried them on the standalone page's "View details"/shareable links.

UI Testing Checklist

Exact name + matching secondary or user email shows the orange "approximate match" badge and warning, and still allows "Create anyway".
Exact name + matching primary email still shows the red "exact match" badge and blocks.
Entering a name whose legal name matches an existing record's first name (or vice versa) surfaces that record.
Entering a secondary email that matches an existing record surfaces it.

Anything else to add?

No schema or model changes — controller/view logic only.
The block remains UI-soft (server still honors skip_duplicate_check); unchanged from before, and only the approximate case was relaxed.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Tightens the People duplicate-check flow so that an exact name plus a matching email (primary, secondary, or user/login email) is treated as an exact match that blocks creation, reducing the chance of creating true duplicate Person records.

Changes:

Update format_duplicate/sorting to collapse secondary/user email matches into the exact (blocked) tier.
Update the duplicate-check page badges and copy to remove the prior “approximate” tier and reflect “exact name and email”.
Adjust request specs for /people/check_duplicates to assert blocked behavior for secondary and user-email matches.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
`app/controllers/people_controller.rb`	Reworks duplicate classification/sorting and broadens “blocked” to any matching email on exact-name matches.
`app/views/people/check_duplicates.html.erb`	Updates badge logic and blocked-message copy; removes the old approximate warning.
`spec/requests/people_check_duplicates_spec.rb`	Updates expectations for secondary/user email scenarios to assert exact-match + blocked messaging.

    labeled_emails << { label: "Secondary email", value: person.email_2 } if person.email_2.present?
    labeled_emails << { label: "User email", value: person.user.email } if person.user&.email.present?
-    emails = labeled_emails.map { |e| e[:value] }.uniq
+    all_emails = [ person.email, person.email_2, person.user&.email ].compact


@@ -366,7 +361,7 @@ def format_duplicate(person, exact: true, entered_email: nil)
      labeled_emails: labeled_emails,
      match_type: match_type,
      name_match: exact,
-      blocked: primary_email_match
+      blocked: exact && any_email_match
    }


@@ -366,7 +361,7 @@ def format_duplicate(person, exact: true, entered_email: nil)
      labeled_emails: labeled_emails,
      match_type: match_type,
      name_match: exact,
-      blocked: primary_email_match
+      blocked: exact && any_email_match
    }


maebeale · 2026-07-04T15:11:58Z

      match_type: match_type,
      name_match: exact,
-      blocked: primary_email_match
+      blocked: primary_email_match || secondary_email_match


🤖 From Claude: Both primary and secondary/user email matches now block, but they stay separate match_types (exact vs approximate) purely so the views can show which email matched. blocked is the OR of the two.

Exact name plus any matching email (primary, secondary, or user) now blocks duplicate creation. A primary-email match still shows as an "exact" match; a secondary/user-email match shows a distinct "approximate" display so the reviewer can see which email matched, but it blocks all the same. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

+      it "hides the Create anyway button" do
        existing_person.update!(email_2: "jane.secondary@testmail.org")

        get check_duplicates_people_path, params: {
          first_name: "Jane", last_name: "Doe", email: "jane.secondary@testmail.org"
        }

+        expect(response.body).not_to include("Create anyway")
+      end


+      it "hides the Create anyway button" do
+        get check_duplicates_people_path, params: {
+          first_name: "Jane", last_name: "Doe", email: existing_person.user.email
+        }
+
+        expect(response.body).not_to include("Create anyway")
      end


…dary email Only an exact name + primary email match should block creation. Exact name plus a secondary or user email is an approximate match: two people can legitimately share an email, so the admin is warned but can still "Create anyway". Also widen duplicate detection to the full set of identity fields the form captures — first name, legal first name, nickname variants, last name, primary email, and secondary email — so a match is caught regardless of which pair lines up. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

maebeale · 2026-07-04T18:38:55Z

-                           .where("REPLACE(REPLACE(LOWER(first_name), '.', ''), ' ', '') IN (?)", first_variants)
+                           .where(
+                             "REPLACE(REPLACE(LOWER(first_name), '.', ''), ' ', '') IN (:variants) OR " \
+                             "REPLACE(REPLACE(LOWER(legal_first_name), '.', ''), ' ', '') IN (:variants)",


🤖 From Claude: Name matching now also checks the stored legal_first_name column, and first_variants above includes nickname variants of both the entered first name and legal name — so e.g. entering "Roberto" surfaces a record stored as first "Bob"/legal "Roberto".

maebeale · 2026-07-04T18:38:55Z

-                            "(users.id IS NULL AND LOWER(people.email) = :email) OR LOWER(people.email_2) = :email OR LOWER(users.email) = :email",
-                            email: email_lower
+                            "(users.id IS NULL AND LOWER(people.email) IN (:emails)) OR " \
+                            "LOWER(people.email_2) IN (:emails) OR LOWER(users.email) IN (:emails)",


🤖 From Claude: The email lookup now searches both the entered primary and secondary email (query_emails) against each record's email/email_2/user email, so a collision on the new person's secondary email is caught too.

maebeale · 2026-07-04T18:39:25Z


+    # Exact name + primary email is an "exact" match and blocks creation. Exact
+    # name plus a secondary or user email is "approximate" — the admin is warned
+    # but can still create the person (they may legitimately share an email).


🤖 From Claude: Blocking now keys off primary_email_match only. Exact name + a secondary/user email is "approximate" — warned but still creatable, since two people can legitimately share an email.

maebeale marked this pull request as ready for review July 4, 2026 15:00

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings July 4, 2026 15:00

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of maebeale July 4, 2026 15:00 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 4, 2026

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maebeale force-pushed the maebeale/person-email-dupe-check branch from e78be62 to 5ef8761 Compare July 4, 2026 15:11

maebeale commented Jul 4, 2026

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Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings July 4, 2026 18:25

maebeale force-pushed the maebeale/person-email-dupe-check branch from 5ef8761 to cb439a2 Compare July 4, 2026 18:25

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of maebeale July 4, 2026 18:25 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 4, 2026

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maebeale changed the title ~~WAIT: Block creation on exact name + any matching email~~ WAIT: Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching Jul 4, 2026

maebeale commented Jul 4, 2026

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maebeale merged commit 4a29828 into main Jul 4, 2026
3 checks passed

maebeale deleted the maebeale/person-email-dupe-check branch July 4, 2026 19:16

maebeale changed the title ~~WAIT: Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching~~ Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching Jul 4, 2026

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Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching#1854

Warn (not block) on approximate email dupes; widen duplicate matching#1854
maebeale merged 2 commits into
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maebeale/person-email-dupe-check

maebeale commented Jun 22, 2026 •

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maebeale commented Jun 22, 2026 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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What is the goal of this PR and why is this important?

How did you approach the change?

UI Testing Checklist

Anything else to add?

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maebeale commented Jun 22, 2026 •

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