Using 'Relation' links as individual items rather than groups

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I’ve been playing with ‘Relation’ items and wondering if there is a way to link to individual items by relation type (not as group)?

Currently when adding a relation link, it seems to create a group of linked items. Adding an item to the group links it to all other items within that group. (E.g. if I link Item A to Item B and Item C, all items are linked)

However not all items in the group may be related. E.g.

Item A is directly related to Item B
Item B is directly related to Item C
BUT Item A is not directly related to Item C

It would be great if we can create links between items on an individual basis as it would allow better granularity and mapping between items (similarly to Jira’s ‘Linked issues’ function).

Also I noticed that if we have to add items in all roles in a relation? If it’s only linked to one role is that possible?

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2

Hi Sarah,

We are planning to rework the relations functionality next year. It would be great if you could share an example for both points you mentioned above to provide more clarity.

Cheers,
Shikha

3

Hi Shika,

Sorry for the delayed response on this!

What I’m thinking of is something similar to Jira where issues can be linked using the ‘Linked issue’ function:

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For what I’m imagining it could look like in Aristotle, please see below.

Mockups

EDITING AND VIEWING RELATION

Users can add one or more relation roles to a relation (same as current functionality). There can be a field for ‘Opposite Role Name’ (with a dropdown to choose another Relation Role) so users can choose what will display on the linked ‘to’ item.
All other components of the relation editor are the same.

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On the relations page, this looks the same, but with an additional column for ‘Items using this Relation’ and Opposite Role Name

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ADDING A RELATION TO AN ITEM

A Relation can be added current way (Actions > Add link), and Step 1 is the same.
Step 2 could be very similar to the current, but will allow for a Role to remain blank (see below). We do this as not all items will use all roles in a Relation.

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DISPLAY RELATION ON ITEM PAGE

When items have been linked, the Relations page will display the linked items similarly to below:

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On the linked item, we’ll see the the opposite role name.

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Use cases

  • Mapping a parent/child relationships for glossary terms (e.g. fruit > apple > cripps apple)
  • Mapping parent/child relationships for Object items (e.g. Person > Student)
  • Mapping a Quality Statement to one or more Data Sets or Distributions
  • Mapping related items (e.g. value domains ‘ISO Date’ and ‘US Date’) where existing ‘Related Content’ functionality doesn’t exist.

Note that this doesn’t really cover ‘groups’ like the current functionality does. It might be that we have multiple Relation types (one-to-one, many-to-many)

4

Hey Sarah! All good ideas — we’ve noted them down for consideration :+1:

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