Yes, Gloo Workspace typically prevents the creation of contacts with duplicate phone numbers. The phone number is the primary way any contact in Gloo is identified.
However, sometimes duplicates may be introduced when integrating with a church management system like Planning Center or CCB. This happens because those systems do allow multiple contacts with duplicate phone numbers, and sometimes Gloo won't sync things the way you'd like it to.
Before integrating or trying to add a a new contact, it's always a good idea to search first to check whether the phone number already exists. You can do this in your People tab by simply typing in the phone number you are checking.
Note: The search by default excludes deleted contacts. Deleted contacts, however, still remain in the background in your account so you can recover them later if needed. To ensure no deleted contacts are using this phone number, you can also select the Deleted status in the Status filter to check there as well.
This check helps you identify any contacts who may already be in the system, which will help prevent duplicate contacts or phone numbers coming over from your ChMS. For example, children’s profiles in Planning Center often share the parent’s phone number. In these cases, Gloo will only sync the record that has existed the longest in Planning Center.
If a contact already exists with that phone number, but you'd actually like it assigned to someone else, you can temporarily replace the incorrect number with a placeholder number before adding the contact who actually owns that phone number. You can find instructions here on how to change someone's existing phone number.