This article outlines best practices for reducing the number of duplicate and similar requests you get, and for finding and dealing with similar and duplicate requests when they do appear.
Reduce similar requests
To help avoid duplicate requests at the point of creating one, a list appears under the text box asking the requester whether existing requests match theirs. Our algorithm matches keywords in both the request title and description to surface a comprehensive set of similar requests that are set to public.
Private requests and requests in the “Released” status aren’t included in this list. For information on how to hide requests that haven’t been reviewed and how to keep these requests private as they move through different statuses, see Request moderation.
We recommend that you include a section in your Product Feedback Policy that encourages your visitors to vote on existing requests, and to add any additional detail or different use cases in the comments section. Remind visitors that requests with more votes are more likely to appear in your reports and to be considered by your product team.
Pendo Feedback shows matching or similar requests as they're added, whether by your internal teams or your visitors.
Merge similar requests
You can merge similar and duplicate requests from:
- Within the Similarity Report
- The Request view of an individual request
- The Browse page
When you merge requests, the votes, comments, subscriptions, tags, and uploads from both requests are added to the preserved request. Any in-app references or URLs leading to the deleted request redirect to the preserved request. The preserved request retains the following details, replacing those of the request that you merge into it:
- The App(s) applied to the preserved request.
- The Product Area applied to the preserved request.
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The Title and Description of the preserved request.
If you want to retain the details of the request that you're merging into the preserved request, copy and paste the contents into the comments section of the preserved request.
Warning: You can't undo a request merge. Ensure your teams have the correct permissions to safeguard the merge function.
Your visitors aren't notified when requests are merged.
If you want to inform subscribers that their request is being merged with another, you can send them a status update before you merge the requests. For example, you can decline a request along with the following update: "Duplicate. I'm declining this because we've got this covered in another request: #1111". (You can find the request # in the URL after "case/".)
You might also want to reassure users that their votes and comments will be associated with the preserved request.
Similarity Report
You can use the Similarity Report to help surface potential duplicates. The Similarity Report is auto-compiled by matching keywords in the Request title and description. The report uses a keyword count to stack rank requests according to their similarity score. The similarity score is depicted in the bar measurement in the Similarity column on the left side of the table.
To find the Similarity Report, select Reports in the left-side navigation and select the Similarity Report tab at the top of the page. From here, you can merge requests by selecting the Merge button on the right side of a pair of requests in each row of the table.
The Similarity Report doesn’t take statuses into account, which means you can match new requests to features that have already been released.
The report is initialized once a day, so check back the next day if a request doesn’t immediately show up in the report.
Request view
You can merge similar and duplicate requests from within a request itself.
1. Open the request you'd like to merge and select the edit icon in the top-right of the request.
2. Select vertical dots that appear in place of the edit icon and then select Merge from the dropdown menu.
3. Search for the request you’d like to merge. (Note that you can search by request ID.)
4. Select the request you’d like to merge.
5. Choose the request Title, Description, Product Area, Privacy, and ID you’d like to preserve.
6. Select Preserve these values under that request.
7. Select Merge features.
8. If you want to merge another request into your preserved request, select Merge again, or select Done to close.
Browse page
You can merge similar and duplicate requests from the Browse page. For more information on the Browse page, see Manage requests in the Browse page.
You can merge requests without navigating from the Browse page by either:
- Using the Actions dropdown after selecting two requests.
- Opening the request details in the right-side panel.
Using the Actions dropdown:
1. Select two requests that you'd like to merge from the table.
2. Select the Actions dropdown that appears when you select requests. Note that this dropdown only appears when you’ve selected requests.
3. Select Merge Selected Requests.
In the request details panel:
1. Open the request details in the right-side of the Browse page by selecting the request from the Requests table.
2. Select the merge icon at the top of the request details, next to the trash icon.
3. Search for the request you’d like to merge. (Note that you can search by request ID.)
4. Select the request you’d like to merge.
Merge requests
After finding and selecting the two requests you'd like to merge:
1. Choose the request Title, Description, Product Area, Privacy, and ID you’d like to preserve.
2. Select Preserve these values under that request.
3. Select Merge features.