Skip to main content

​
What are duplicate connections?

Each connection in Terminal is a link to an underlying telematics provider account. When an end user goes through the Link Flow, it’s possible to create more than one connection to the same provider account. Whether Terminal reuses an existing connection or creates a new one depends on your application’s Dedupe Connections setting.

​
Dedupe Connections setting

Configure this in the Terminal Dashboard under Settings > General > Dedupe Connections. Enabled is the default for production applications.

​
Enabled

When deduplication is enabled, Terminal checks for an existing connection to the same provider account before creating a new one. A match requires:
  • The same provider account (sourceId)
  • The same External ID, or no External ID on either the existing or incoming connection
If a match is found, Terminal updates the existing connection instead of creating a new one. Credentials, tags, and other metadata from the Link Flow are merged into that connection. If no match is found — for example, because a different External ID was passed — Terminal creates a new connection to the same provider account.

​
Disabled

When deduplication is disabled, Terminal always creates a new connection when a user completes the Link Flow, even if that provider account is already connected. Use this when you intentionally want multiple connections to the same provider account — for example, to represent different business contexts, customers, or internal identifiers as separate connections. External IDs do not prevent duplicate connections when deduplication is disabled.

​
How External IDs impact duplicate connections

External IDs are one of the ways to associate Custom Identifiers with a connection. External IDs are intended to be your system’s unique identifier for the connection. When Dedupe Connections is enabled, passing a different External ID into the Link Flow than the one on an existing connection causes Terminal to create a second connection to the same provider account. For this reason, we recommend using a consistent External ID from your system when initiating the Link Flow. This lets you intentionally create duplicate connections when you need multiple connections to the same provider account while deduplication is otherwise enabled.