Fuzzy matching

[Austin]

Is there any form of fuzzy matching in appsheet? Or a match of getting something similar to fuzzy matching? I have 2 fields that are Primary Name and Second Name. I only want to display second name if its more than a certain amount different. Most of the time Second Name is Coca-Cola and Primary is Coca Cola so the biggest difference is punctuation but it could also be INC, LLC, etc.

[Steve · Accepted solution]

Nothing built in.

[Bahbus]

It would be fairly easy to build your own to catch most cases though. I imagine just a two column table:

Company Name    | Fuzzy Match

Coca-Cola, LLC. | Coke
Coca-Cola, LLC. | Coca
Coca-Cola, LLC. | Coca-Cola

ect…

I believe, once built out, you could use the Predictive Model functionality to help find other matches, in the future.

[Austin]

While this use case would not particularly benefit enough to implement that solution, I think there are cases that would. Thanks!

[Bahbus]

Yeah, probably more useful if you’re going to have potentially hundreds of users with hundreds of company options. You’ll get all kinds of crazies then.

[Austin]

Well its not User based it’s just the vendor name in our corporate software may not be a company name IE John Newman is the name listed in our vendor table but his company name is John’s Plumbing so you may recognize one or the other but Coca-Cola and Coca Cola doesn’t matter cause you know that’s the same thing. I think the use case was not explained well. We will be displaying “Primary” or “Primary&Secondary” it’s not for any real matching purpose.