Why do you sometimes see duplicate emails attached to parent records in NetSuite?
It's likely because you are attaching the email to multiple NetSuite records such as a Contact and a Customer record. NetSuite's default behavior is also to show the messages saved to Contacts at the parent Customer level so if you attach to both records not only will the original email attached by you show on the Customer record but the email that was on the Contact record will also automatically show on the Customer record. The result is an unwanted duplicate message.
Another probable reason is multiple people putting the same email thread on Autopilot
To ascertain who attached the email and if it is unique, you can:
Expose the ExternalID field in your message view
Check the message ID for uniqueness
Check to see who attached the email and follow up with them
Additionally, you can create a saved search in NetSuite that includes the external ID of the message record and export it to Excel to look for duplicates.
Best Practice - Let ExtendSync and NetSuite do the work for you
Anytime you save an email to a Contact and that Contact has a Parent Company associated with it, NetSuite will automatically roll the email up to the Parent Company level without you having to save to it. Because of this you only need to save that email to the Contact record. If you absolutely don't need it on the Contact record simply save it to the Customer record only.
👉 Learn which child records will automatically roll up emails to parent records.
Examples Below
❌ Example (Wrong Way)
I save an email to Astrid's Contact Record + I save the same email to the Customer Record - The Coffee Corner. Because the Contact is associated with the Customer record, it will duplicate the email on the Customer Record because technically 2 emails are being saved.
✔️ Example (Right Way)
If you do not want duplicates but want to see the email on both the Contact and Customer records, save the email ONLY to the Contact Record. It will automatically roll up for you (as described above).
