In our real-life usage, we have found that it will be very useful if the concept of type to type Relations can be extended to include “extended” relations too.
For example, if type User Story is related to type Feature and type Feature is related to type Epic, then “extended relations” of an instance of User Story will include the instances of Epic related to that User Story via a Feature.
In Board view, currently the configuration options for Columns/Rows includes only the types directly related to the type(s) selected as Card. It will be very useful if the selection option also includes types that the Card type has extended relations with. This will allow creation of very useful Boards, for example a board where User Stories are cards, Features are rows and Epics are columns - an all-in-one board for a common need. Currently in order to create this view, a direct relation has to exist from the User Story to the Epic, which is quite tedious to maintain for each user story.
However, if an extended related type is selected as either Column or Row, then drag and drop between either the columns or rows can’t be supported (will have to be restricted) since the card actually doesn’t have any direct relationship with the type in the column or row (as the case may be). With this restriction put in place, such views will still be very useful.
In fact, further extension of this concept to types farther away in relationship chain can be used for the most common need of the Program/Project containers (all entities under a given project will have an implicit indirect relation ultimately ending in the program/project).
Hi, I wanted to add in this thread some related commentary and desires around Extended Relations.
I am making good use of the “Connections” fields between entities. I find this a kind of rudimentary sub-table within a table, because we already have in Fibery the great ability to customize what part of the related entity is viewed. I am eager to see this morph into a full-featured subtable view, in which you could actually, for example, enter data in the related entity right in the Connections/Sub-Table view, as you can do in Notion or Coda.
One thing I’d really like to see is more visibility between the Extended Relations that are present between these entities. If I have entities connected to the entity showing in the related Connections area, it would be great to see connections to that entity that are not “adjacent,” but extended. I think this is possibly in board views with Context Views.
For example, I have a task that is part of a project, and that project is part of a goal. I then set up a Meeting Entity, and I mention the task. I’d love to be able to configure the view to not only show the project that the task is in, which is a direct relation I can already see in Fibery, but also have the ability to display further removed relations, such as this goal. Because the goal is a parent of the Project, which is a parent of the task, the extended connection exists. And for purposes of this Meeting, it would be very useful to see what Goal that task will help accomplish, by seeing the goal right there displayed in Connections with the task.