Advanced Settings: Relationships

Accessing Relationship Type Settings

If you wish to edit or create your own Relationship Types, you can do so in Advanced Settings, which can be reached by the following steps:

  1. Click on the Settings icon () in the Toolbar
  2. Click onto the Data Types tab
  3. At the top of the Relationships section, click on the Edit button
  4. To edit an existing relationship type, select the relationship type from the list
  5. To create a new relationship type, click on the Add button at the bottom of the list

Editing Relationship Type Fields

The tables below describes all of the settings that are available when editing or creating your own Item Types.

General Fields

Field Description Possible Values
Label A label for this item type, which will be used throughout the interface.

If an Item Type will only have a single Relationship Type (e.g. an "Event" has only one "Location"), you may choose to label this relationship type the same as the item type.
A short text value (e.g. "Participant", "Project", "Friend", etc.)


Color Choose a color to represent the relationship type.

This is used to color lines in the Mindmap, and relationships in Relationship View. 		Choose from available colors.
Icon Choose an icon shape to represent the relationship type.

This is used when drawing relationships in Relationship View (it will be depicted with an initial + this shape). 		Choose from the available icon shapes.
Mindmap Line Choose the line type used to draw the relationship in Mindmap View. Thick, Solid, Dashed, Dotted, Dot-dash.
Always show in inspector When selected, this Relationship Type will always be shown in the Inspector relationships tab for the appropriate Item Types, even when there are no relationships of this type to display.

When not selected, the Relationship Type will only be shown when a relationship already exists. The user would need to click + More Relationships and find it in the list to create relationships. 
Enabled Determines whether this Relationship Type is used in the timeline or not.

When this is not selected, the Relationship Type will not be available in your timeline and any existing relationships will be removed.

Disabling the Relationship Type is the equivalent of deleting it, except it remains in the list for you to activate later.

Inverse Relationship

Relationship Type is bi-directional A bidirectional relationship is one where the same relationship (with the same name) exists in both directions. That is, if Item A has this relationship to Item B, then Item B has the same relationship to Item A.

An easy example to consider would be something like "Sibling". If Fred is a sibling of Jane, then Jane is also a sibling of Fred.

When this option is selected, any relationship you create will be shown in the Inspector (under the same label) for both items.
Show Inverse in Inspector If the relationship is not bi-directional, that means that the relationship is different in each direction. A similar example would be one of "Parent" and "Child". If James is the child of Linda, then Linda is a parent of James.

In this case, we say that "Parent" is the inverse relationship of "Child".

When this option is selected, this inverse relationship will be shown in the Inspector:
  • If I select the item Linda, the relationship "Child: James" will be shown
  • If I select the item James, the relationship "Parent: Linda" will be shown

When this option is not selected, only the primary direction of the relationship will be shown, and the inverse relationship will not be shown:

  • If I select the item Linda, the relationship "Child: James" will be shown
  • If I select the item James, no relationship back to Linda will be shown (or, at least, none associated with this Relationship Type)

Generally speaking, you are unlikely to want to show Inverse Relationships between Events and Entities. With a relationship such as "Location", you would clearly want to show the Location whenever you select an event, but you may not want to list hundreds of events in the relationship tab when you select a location. 

    
Inverse Label See the description above for what constitutes an inverse relationship.

This field defines the label used when showing the inverse relationship in the Inspector (e.g. "Parent" in the example above, where the primary relationship is "Child").

Associated Item Types

Item Types with a field for this relationship
The item types you choose will have fields in the Inspector and Spreadsheet for this relationship.

Examples include:
  • an Event item has a relationship field called "Location"
  • an Event item has a relationship field called "Participant"
  • a Person item has a relationship field called "Birthplace"
  • a Project item has a relationship field called "Project Lead"

In the case of inverse relationships, select only the item types that will have a field with the primary label of the relationship: 

  • the targets of the relationship will get the inverse label automatically, and do not need to be selected here.

Note: This setting is mirrored in the Item Types tab, where the user chooses "Has relationships to XXX called" values.
Allowed Item Types for this relationship
The item types you choose will be acceptable values for this relationship field.

Examples include:
  • a Location item would be an acceptable value for a relationship field called "Location"
  • a Person item would be an acceptable value for a relationship field called "Participant"
  • A Location item would be an acceptable value for a relationship field called "Birthplace"
  • A Person item would be an acceptable value for a relationship field called "Project Lead"

Note: This setting is mirrored in the Item Types tab, where the user chooses "Has relationships to XXX called" values.