Relations module


1. Introduction

The Relations module is used for creating dynamic relations related to roles between entities across a solution. This is especially useful when creating many-to-many relations and can be used to always have an overview of relations between entities and personnel.

Administrators can set up specific relation types e.g. Lawyer and/or Client, and relation pairs, such as Lawyer <--> Client. Relation pairs always requires a setup with two relation types which must both be unique. Setting up a relation enables users to quickly navigate to and from entities which have some relation to each other.

Permissions can also be set up in such a way that only specific people can see certain relations. This is referred to as "Security trimming".

Relations can be set up to be displayed in a webpart on a WorkPoint page.

2. Configuration of Relation Module settings

Setting up and configuring the Relations module in a WorkPoint solution is done through the WorkPoint Administration, which can be accessed by following these steps:

   2.1. Modern UI

Accessing the WorkPoint Administration in a Modern UI version of WorkPoint can be done by following these steps:

  1. In your WorkPoint365 click the "Home" button in the upper left corner of the page.
  2. Click the cog icon in the bottom of the side panel to enter the WorkPoint Administration.

   2.2. Classic UI

Accessing the WorkPoint Administration in a Classic UI version of WorkPoint can be done by following these steps:

  1. In your Classic UI WorkPoint solution, click the cog icon in the top-right of the solution.
  2. Click the "WorkPoint Administration" menu item from the list.

From the WorkPoint Administration, follow these steps to access the Relations Module settings:

  1. When on the WorkPoint365 administration page, click the “Relations” button in the left navigation menu.
  1. Click to either enable or disable security trimming. Security trimming makes it possible to control which people can see which relations. Security trimming introduces a minor performance impact when loading relations. This should therefore only be used when necessary.

An example of the use of security trimming could be users A and B who have access to a project. Users B, C, and D also have access to a company. In this example, only user B can see a relation between the two entities.

The relationship can be exemplified as in the following image:

  1. On the “Relation settings” page there are two tables: One for “Relation types” and one for “Relationtype pairs”
  2. Add the relation types that you might use. An example of a relation type could be “Lawyer”, “Client” or perhaps “Partner”. Relation types added in the left table will automatically be available for use when you add a “Relationtype pair” in the right table.
  3. Add some relation type pairs based on the relation types you just added. These relationtype pairs define the kind of relationships that can be formed between business module entities (eg. Companies, Projects or others)
  4. When satisfied with the setup, press the “Save settings” button below the “Relationtype pairs” table.

3. Configuration of MyTools buttons

  1. When on the WorkPoint365 administration page, click the “My Tools” button in the left navigation menu
  1. Select the business module you want to add buttons to, by using the “Select instance” select menu.
  2. Press the “Add button” button for your desired group (“Actions” and “New” are default groups, but others can be added by the “Add group” button).
  1. Enter a title for the new button.
  2. Choose an icon for the new button. WorkPoint provides a set of standard icons for you to choose from. Click the field to select one.
  3. Select "Open wizard" for the  Type of the button.
  4. Select the "Relations" wizard from the drop-down menu.
  5. Select a "Target business module". A preset target business module will preselect what business module to use for the search when this button is pressed in the “MyTools” menu and the wizard is being run. The user creating a relation can of course overrule this.
  6. Select a "Relationtype A". A preset relation type (be it “Partner”, “Lawyer” or others) can be selected for the relation, the “Relationtype A” is the type of relation associated with the source business module entity (“Company”, “Project” and so forth) that the relation is being created from. Eg. the site from where, the user clicks this button, in the “My Tools” menu. The user creating the actual relation can of course overrule preset relation types.
  7. Select a "Relationtype B". This defines if a relation type for the target business module entity (“Company”, “Project” and so forth) should be preset when pushing this button. “Relationtype B” will only allow users to set a relation type here that exists in a “Relation type pair” (see ”Relations  Types and pairs” section above). The user creating the actual relation can of course overrule preset relation types.
  8. Select a "Filter field" (Optional). For ease of use, a preset search for the target business module entity can be configured for the relation wizard. If the “Filter field” and “Filter value” are supplied, an automatic search will take place when creating a new relation, and the results will let a user quickly find the target of the relation. The “Filter field” requires that a “Target business module” is selected. The fields loaded in the “Filter field” drop-down menu, are provided by filling out the “Duplicate check” settings for a business module.
  9. Select a "Filter value" (Optional). Once supplied with a “Filter field”, a value can be entered in the “Filter value” input box. If, for instance, a “zip code” field has been selected in “Filter field”, a user can then input a valid zipcode in the “Filter value” field. When this button is pressed in the “MyTools” menu and the wizard is run, the search will then take place and search for target entities matching a zip code with the provided value.
  10. Save your settings.

4. Configuration of Tab Views (for Classic UI)

The following only applies to the Classic UI version of WorkPoint. In this version WorkPoint, Relations can be shown in a so-called tab view. Other types of information are shown in tab views, such as documents and emails. Tab views look like this in the the Classic UI version of WorkPoint:

In order to display relations in a tab view, such a tab view must be defined. This can be done through the WorkPoint Administration by following these steps:

  1. On the solution, click the cog icon in the top-right of the page.
  2. Click the "WorkPoint Administration" menu item.
  1. On the WorkPoint365 administration page, click the desired business module to get its drop-down menu.
  2. Under “Advanced Settings” click on the “Tab View settings” button.
  1. Name your new tab
  2. Select the “Relation” type from the “Type” select drop-down.
  3. Select the relation types you wish to see in the tab using the “Relationtype” multi-select menu (Select more by holding down the “Ctrl” key while selecting relation types).
  4. Check “Include inactive relations” if you want to show relations that are not active anymore. Note that it is possible to add more relation tabs with different relation type options.
  5. Save your settings.

A new tab view now shows relations once they are created. An example is shown in the image below:

5. Adding the Relations webpart (for Modern UI)

Relations can be shown in WorkPoint 365 with a specialized webpart for the purpose. This webpart is called the "WP365 - Relations" webpart.

The webpart can be set up in the following way:

  1. When editing a page, click the "+" button to add a new webpart.
  2. Search for a fraction of the word "Relations".
  3. Select the "WP365 - Relations" webpart from the list.
  1. Click the "Edit" button to configure the webpart.
  2. Provide a title for the webpart.
  3. click the "Relation types" field to select which relations to add to the webpart.
  4. In this example, "Organizer" and "Project" are added.
  5. Click the "Republish" button. If this is the first time publishing this page, the button will simply be called "Publish".

The result is a webpart like this:

6. Configuration for using Relations in WorkPoint Express

WorkPoint Express uses Tab Views to show relations - just like the Classic UI version of WorkPoint. Therefore, if it should show up in WorkPoint Express, a tab view for this functionality must be set up. This can be done in the following way:

  1. In the WorkPoint Administration, click the header of the business module for which relations should be configured.
  2. Click the "Tab View settings" menu item.

Tab View settings are used for configuring which tabs are visible in WorkPoint Express. A new one needs to be created to display the relations for the business module:

  1. Tab View webpart settings can be applied to individual site pages from the Master Site. These site pages can be selected from this drop-down menu. In this case, the setting is left at "Default".
  2. Click the "Add tab" button to add a new tab to the list.
  1. Use the "Move up" and "Move down" buttons to move the new tab to the desired position. In this example, the new tab has been moved to the bottom of the list. This also affects where the "Relations" tab is eventually placed in WorkPoint Express.
  1. Give the new tab a title of "Relations" or whatever title you want the relations tab to have.
  2. Set the "Type" of the tab to "Relation".
  3. For "Relationtype", select the relation types to be displayable in the tab. You can select multiple relationtypes by shift-selecting multiple items. In this case, "Organizer" and "Project" is selected.
  4. If the tab should also include inactive relations, set the "Include inactive relations" checker.
  5. When done, click the "Save" button.

The configuration of the Tab View, which WorkPoint Express uses to display the different sections of entities, is now set up to display relations in the Relations tab. An example of this is shown in the image below:

New relations can also be created from WorkPoint Express:

  1. Right-click the Relations tab view
  2. From the "Create Relation" section, click one of the "New relation" buttons. These are the buttons set up in the MyTools menu for creating new relations, and new buttons can be created in the MyTools settings.

7. End User Guide

In this example, we will create a relation between a company and a project and display the relation in the company's Home page.

Once a button has been set up to create new relations in the My Tools menu, the relation is set up using this button:

  1. In the My Tools panel, click the "All actions" button.
  1. From the All actions menu, expand the "New" tab.
  2. Select "New relation" from the menu to create a new relation.
  1. On the “Find entity” step, enter search strings in the supplied fields to find the project (in this case) you wish to create the relation to. If no business module entity can be found, you have the option of creating a new entity by clicking “Create …”, which will take you to the next step.
  2. If you have found an entity and want to edit it before creating the relation select the entity from the list and click on "Select and edit". In this case, we simply click "Select and continue".
  1. In this example, the company (Anderson's Custom Bikes) is set as "Organizer" as Relation type.
  2. The project defined in the previous step (Design of Bike0075) is set as "Project" as Relation type.
  3. In this case, start- and end dates for the relation are set. This information can be viewed when seeing the relation in the web part in WorkPoint 365. If start / end date is supplied, the relation will only be shown in the web part if today's date falls in between these two dates. The relation will also be shown if the user checks “Show inactive relations” in the web part settings.
  4. A description is set for the relation.
  5. A responsible user is set for this relation. Per default, this field is set to the user who is creating the relation. This can also be left empty.
  6. When satisfied with the information, click “Save relation” in the bottom right corner of the wizard, and the relation will be created in a matter of seconds.

8. Result

When you have added your relation between two entities, and added the relations in the Relations webpart, the result will look like this.

The relation can be inspected by clicking the title link for the relation:

The window that opens from clicking the title link presents the user with the following options:

  1. Click the "GO TO" button to go to the site of the project.
  2. Click the "EDIT" button to edit the relation.
  3. Click the "DELETE" button to delete the relation.

The relation can also be viewed in WorkPoint Express:

In the red box in the image above, the relation between the Anderson's Custom Bikes company and the Design of Bike0075 project is shown in the "Active relations" tab on the "Anderson's Custom Bikes" entity. This tab is created automatically if a relation is created to an entity for which a tab view has not been set up. The relation is also visible from the project, which can be accessed in WorkPoint Express by simply double-clicking the project title:


In the Classic UI version of WorkPoint, the Relations tab is shown next to the other tab views:

9. Security trimming

As previously mentioned, security trimming refers to who can see relations between entities. The concept is illustrated in the image below:

In this example, there are two entities; a project and a company. Some relation exists between these two entities.

Person A only has permission to view information for the project, and persons C and D have permission to view only information about the company. Person B has permission to view information about both the project and the company. The relation between the project and the company is therefore only visible to Person B while invisible to persons A, C, and D.

Please note that you should only enable security trimming if you have configured some security settings on your solution. Also note that enabling security trimming has a minor impact on performance when loading relations.

Security trimming can be enabled from the Relations Module settings page:

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    Heine Havmand-Andreassen (Delegate)

    Please show the result of setting up the relation.