What does coalescing a field during imports imply?

When a field is coalesced during imports in ServiceNow, it serves as a unique key for identifying records in the target table. Coalescing a field means that ServiceNow will use this specified field to determine whether a record already exists in the database. If a corresponding record is found, the import process will update that existing record instead of creating a duplicate. This is essential for maintaining data integrity and preventing redundancy in the ServiceNow platform.

In practical terms, if you set a field to be coalesced, you're effectively telling the system that this is the field to check first when processing incoming data. If no match is found, a new record will be created; otherwise, an update will occur. This ensures efficiency and consistency in how data is handled during imports.