Manage Collection Relationships

Manage parent and child Collections in a Collection relationship.

What is a Collection Relationship?

A Collection relationship links two Collections by designating one Collection as a parent Collection, the other as a child Collection, and defining data keys or columns linking both Collections. The Collection from which this relationship is created is automatically designated as the parent Collection. The relationship is a one-to-many relationship such that a record in the parent Collection can have multiple matching records in the child Collection.

Consider the following example of two Collections at a college:

Professors: One Collection named Professors contains record information about each professor, such as the name, department of study, email address, and classes each professor teaches.
Available Courses: Another Collection named Available Courses contains record information about all courses offered at that college, such as the name, the professor teaching that course, and its area of study.

The common data between these Collection records is the name of the course. Use this common data to establish a one-to-many relationship from one Collection to the other. To establish a relationship between the available courses and which classes are available of each course during a semester, the Available Courses Collection is the parent Collection. The Professors Collection is the child Collection that contains multiple records of each class from the Available Courses Collection, thereby establishing the one-to-many relationship between these Collections. Students use this example to register for classes in available courses.

Inversely, the Professors Collection can be the parent Collection, with the Available Courses Collection being the child Collection: students can view all classes that a specific professor teaches regardless of the courses that professor teaches.

See Configure a Relationship Between Data in a Parent Collection with Data in a Child Collection to define a relationship between two Collections.

View Child Collection Records from a Parent Collection

When two Collections are linked through a relationship, records in the child Collection can be viewed from the parent Collection.

Permissions

Your user account or group membership must have the "Collections: View Collections" permission on both parent and child Collections to view the list of Collections unless your user account has the Make this user a Super Admin setting selected. See the Collections permissions or ask your Administrator for assistance.

Furthermore, your user account or group membership must have the View record permission from a Collection's configuration to view that Collection's records. See Configure a Collection or ask the manager of that Collection for assistance.

Follow these guidelines to view child Collection records in a parent Collection:

View a record in a parent Collection. The View Record tab displays showing the parent Collection record.
Click on the Relationships tab. The Relationships tab displays showing child Collection record(s). The record(s) from the child Collection is retrieved using the common data key between the two Collections. The data in the parent Collection's key is matched with that in the child Collection's key and the respective record(s) from the child Collection is retrieved.
Click the View iconfor the record you want to view. The child Collection record displays in the View Record tab using the Screen configured to view a record in the child Collection.