Merging Users
Automatically unify contributor identities across Git and PM tools to keep attribution accurate and avoid duplicate contributors in reporting and billing.
TL;DR
LinearB provides four user-merging mechanisms. Ad-hoc merge automatically merges newly discovered accounts when an exact identifier or email match exists (100% confidence). Auto-merge runs every 24 hours and automatically merges high-confidence suggestions (95%+ confidence). Bulk merge presents suggested merges for administrator approval (80%+ confidence). Single merge allows administrators to merge accounts directly from a user profile using suggestions or manual search.
Understand how user merging works
User merging in LinearB ensures clean, accurate user data by unifying identities across Git and project management tools. This prevents duplicate users and improves visibility into developer activity across the platform.
A single person may appear multiple times due to different email addresses, usernames, or authentication methods. LinearB provides four merge methods to consolidate these records into a single platform user:
- Ad-hoc merge – Automatically merges newly discovered accounts when an exact identifier or email match is found
- Auto-merge – Runs every 24 hours and automatically merges high-confidence suggestions
- Bulk merge – Review and approve merge suggestions generated by LinearB
- Single merge – Manually merge additional accounts into an existing user from the user profile
This improves:
- Accuracy across dashboards and reports
- Clarity in team- and user-level insights
- Data integrity for billing and licensing
Understand auto-merge
Auto-merge consolidates user identities across connected systems such as GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jira, and Azure DevOps.
Auto-merge runs every 24 hours. During each run, LinearB generates a new set of merge suggestions using its identity matching engine and automatically merges suggestions with a confidence score of 95% or higher.
Merge additional accounts for a user
Use single merge when you are viewing a user and want to associate additional accounts with that user. You can select from merge suggestions or manually search for an account to merge.
- Navigate to Settings → Users & Teams → Users.
- Select the user you want to update.
- Click Merge Account.
- Select the additional account to merge.
- Confirm the merge.
The selected account is merged into the user immediately and historical activity is preserved.
Understand ad-hoc merge
Ad-hoc merge is an automatic merge mechanism that runs whenever LinearB discovers a new account from a connected platform, Git provider, project management tool, AI tool, or collaboration tool.
If the new account has an exact identifier or email match with an existing user, LinearB automatically merges the accounts immediately. Ad-hoc merge requires a 100% confidence match.
Unlike auto-merge, which evaluates merge suggestions every 24 hours, ad-hoc merge requires a 100% confidence match and occurs automatically when new accounts are discovered.
Merge users in bulk
Use bulk merge when you need to review and merge multiple suggested user pairs at once. This is useful when onboarding new systems or performing large-scale identity cleanup.
Bulk merge displays merge suggestions with a confidence score of 80% or higher. Administrators review and approve the suggested merges before they are applied.
To merge users in bulk:
- Navigate to Settings → Users & Teams → Users
- Click Bulk Merge
- Review the suggested merge candidates
- Select or deselect the merge suggestions you want to apply
- Review the designated Primary Account for each merge
- Click Merge
All selected merges process immediately.
Understand primary account behavior
When users are merged, whether through single merge, bulk merge, auto-merge, or ad-hoc merge, one account is designated as the primary account:
- The primary account defines the user's name, email, avatar, and permissions
- Permissions are inherited only from the primary account
- Team memberships from all merged accounts are combined
- Historical activity from secondary accounts is preserved
Understand why user merging matters
By maintaining a unified user identity model, user merging:
- Prevents inflated user counts
- Improves billing and license accuracy
- Ensures developer activity is attributed correctly
- Provides clearer, more reliable engineering metrics
The result is a cleaner data model and more trustworthy insights across LinearB.
How did we do?
Managing Users in the Users & Teams – Users Tab
Migrating to the New Unified User Management UI
