Activating and Ordering Rules

The order and active state of your rules directly influence which values end up in the golden record. This article explains how to enable and disable individual rules and how rule sequence affects the merge outcome.

Enabling and Disabling Rules

Each rule card has a toggle switch on its right side. When the toggle is on (blue), the rule is active and will run during execution. When the toggle is off (grey), the rule is disabled and will be skipped entirely.

Two rule cards side by side — one with a blue active toggle and one with a grey disabled toggle

Disabling a rule is useful when:

  • You want to temporarily exclude a field from the merge without deleting the rule configuration.
  • You are testing the impact of a subset of rules using the preview.
  • A rule is seasonally relevant and you only activate it for certain runs.

Tip

Disabling rules and checking the preview is an effective way to debug unexpected golden record values. Disable all rules, then re-enable them one by one to isolate which rule is producing an unwanted result.

Ordering Rules

Rules are evaluated in the order they appear on the tab, from top to bottom. You can reorder rules by dragging and dropping a card to a new position. Grab the drag handle (the six-dot icon on the left side of each card) and drag it up or down.

Rule card being dragged to a new position in the list with a drag handle icon visible on the left

How Order Affects Master Record Determination

For Master Record Rules, each rule evaluates all records in a group and assigns a "win" to the record with the best value for that field. After all active rules run, the record with the most wins is declared the master.

  • Rule order does not affect which record wins — every rule is evaluated independently and contributes one win to the tally.
  • However, in a tie (equal number of wins), the record that appears first in the group (by data load order) wins. If you have rules that frequently tie, consider adding a tiebreaker rule based on a reliable field.

How Order Affects Overwrite Rules

For Overwrite Rules, order matters more directly:

  • Rules run top-to-bottom. Each rule is independent — if one rule's condition is not met and the overwrite is skipped, the next rule for the same field does not automatically run. Rules for the same field are not chained as fallbacks.
  • If you have two rules targeting the same field (which is not the typical setup, but possible via re-configuration), the second rule runs after the first and may overwrite what the first rule wrote.

Best Practice

Put your most important and most reliable rules at the top of the list. For Master Rules, this ensures that authoritative fields (like a primary key from a trusted source) contribute wins before less reliable fields. For Overwrite Rules, higher-priority fields are less likely to be affected by rule order interactions.

Saving Rule Order

Reordering rule cards changes the local UI state. The new order is committed to the server when you click Save Rules or Save and Execute. If you navigate away without saving, the order reverts to its last saved state.