Hi IQ Users !
This is a follow up to a discussion that started here: 1. Items
As this is a book page, the comments will eventually be removed, so this thread should be used instead.
[quote=Pierre_Admin]
The linked items feature has yet to be implemented, lack of time and apparent interest from users. Would you use this ?
It would take the form of a linked items pane. Links would have an optional property, describing the relationship (i.e. Employer / Employee, is part of / contains, etc)
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[quote=jimspoon]
I think it's a very interesting idea. Not sure exactly how I'd use it - that will take some thinking and discovery. But it seems like it would be useful to have a simpler way of linking that wouldn't involve parent-child arrangements, ordering of children under the parents, and selecting the right hierarchy settings needed to find the related items.
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[quote=David_H]
IF the user could quickly link items on the fly I would find the feature immensely useful, in fact a lot of things I've done in IQ are for the purposes of achieving something approaching that. In my mind being able to link items would allow IQ to retain it's incredible flexibility (and add more flexibility), while also allowing it to have a little more structure like a traditional CRM program (just to choose one example). For instance a user might just create a grid to track phone calls, and those phone calls could each be linked to a contact, without having to make them child items of the contact. If many/one links would be possible that would create even more flexibility.
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After giving some thought to this, and to avoid adding another pane and UI to manage, this is what I'm proposing:
- Much like the Inbox, Search and Scratch grids, there would be a Related Items grid
- Users could set which grid to use as the Related Items grid
- The grid could be shown in the Tab Workspace, detached and shown in a pane, or copy / pasted into another grid
- It would behave as a regular grid except that the grid source would be fixed
- The grid would monitor the active view and show one of:
- List of all related items for the selected items
- List of related items that are common to the selected items
- Adding items to this grid (keyboard input, Drag-drop, etc) would add items to the list of related items
- Deleting items in this grid would allow removing items from the list of related items
- The grid would support hoisting, though when hoisted, the grid would of course stop monitoring the active view
- A special column would give the Relation between each item and the selected items
- The Properties Pane would have a new sub-section in Item Info: Related Items (alongside Parents, Siblings, Children)
Any thoughts ?
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
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