Users intermittently hit 'An entry with same key already exists' errors on specific screens (for example, Equipment PM Action, or a Shop Order-related page) — clearing the affected user's personal profile fixes it temporarily, but the error comes back later, and there's no obvious trigger for when it'll recur.

Question

Users intermittently hit 'An entry with same key already exists' errors on specific screens (for example, Equipment > PM Action, or a Shop Order-related page) — clearing the affected user's personal profile fixes it temporarily, but the error comes back later, and there's no obvious trigger for when it'll recur.

Accepted Answer

This is caused by a profile-layering conflict, not corruption needing a full profile wipe: IFS builds a screen's effective field ordering by layering the application's own hard-coded defaults, then the IFS Standard profile, then the Base Profile, then the user's Personal Profile on top. Deploying a delivery or a new custom field can shift that first (hard-coded) layer, and the resulting combination across all four layers can end up assigning two fields the same order index — when the client tries to build its internal key/value set from that, the duplicate key causes exactly this error (on the client side, not in the database). Rather than clearing the user's whole profile every time (which only works until the next deployment shifts things again), back up their profile, then navigate to the specific screen's node in it (for example, User/Windows/Features/tbwShopOrd for a table view, or .../frmShopOrd/Layout for a form view — ignore any _Ext suffix if an extension layer like IFS Global Extension is in use) and delete just the ColOrder (or Order) entry there. If the issue is tied to something shared across users rather than one personal profile, removing the same entry from the Base Profile instead is what stops it from recurring for everyone built on that base.

Answer