A Parent-Child view is a type of view that is only available in Grid Displays; it is not available in Calendar or Chart Displays. A Parent-Child view allows you to display the contents of two or more related CorasWorks views at once. One view is defined as the parent view and at least one view is defined as a child view. They must share at least one column of common data. You can also have multiple child views and/or grandchild views. Each view must be created in the Data Display before the Parent-Child view can be defined.
For example, you could start by creating a view that displays all of your customers. Then you could create another view that displays all of the products that your customers have purchased. You could combine these two views into a Parent-Child view, setting the customer view as the parent and the product sales view as the child. Then, the Parent-Child view will show all of the products that each customer has purchased indented below each customer. If you wanted to take it a step further, you could add another child view that shows contact information for each customer, or calls made to Support by each customer.
When identifying the views to include in the Parent-Child view, you identify the key column in each view that contains the common data. Several properties, such as display columns, filters, sort order, and conditional formatting, are carried forward from each of the source views that you choose to include in the Parent-Child view. Other properties are defined in the Parent-Child view as described later in this section. The results are displayed in a Grid.
In addition, the actions that are available in each of the source views are available in the Parent-Child view. Any action that can be executed against an item in an Active Display can also be executed against an item in a Parent-Child view. However, one of the pages in the Display Wizard allows the builder to identify any actions that should not be included in the Parent-Child view.
When you create a new view in a Grid Display and set the View Type to Parent-Child View, the left-hand navigation area of the Display Wizard is refreshed so that only the property categories that apply to Parent-Child views are available.
The first page that is displayed after the View Type is set to Parent-Child View is the Parent-Child page. This page is used to identify the source views to include as the parent, child, and (optionally) grandchild views.
1. All of the available views in the current instance of the Grid Display are shown in the Select views area. Highlight the view that you want to use as the parent and click the right arrow.
•Toolset Data Providers are not supported by Parent-Child views. In addition, the Parent Child display uses the v11.1 display.
2. Highlight the view that you want to use as the child and click the right arrow.
3. Next, you need to identify the column in each view that contains common data (e.g., customer ID number, project name, etc.). This is the column that will be referenced to “connect” with the child list, and contain a matching value in each of the key columns. To do this, highlight the child view and select the key column in the parent view from the Parent Key Column drop-down. Then select the key column in the child view from the Child Key Column drop-down.
NOTE: When you highlight the parent view in the Parent Child Tree area, the properties for the Parent and Child Key Columns are not displayed. To view these properties, you need to highlight the child view.
4. At this point, you can be finished identifying the parent and child views, or you can add additional child views or grandchild views. You may identify as many child and grandchild views as you wish.
•To add another child view, click on the parent view in the Parent Child Tree, highlight the child view in the Select views area, and click the right arrow. Identify the key columns as described in Step 3.
•To add a grandchild view, click on the child view in the Parent Child Tree, highlight the view you want to identify as the grandchild in the Select views area, and click the right arrow. Identify the key columns as described in Step 3.
NOTE: To improve performance, CorasWorks recommends that you try to limit the number of items returned by the Parent-Child view. As with any type of view, the more data you include, the longer it will take to display results. It is also recommended that whenever possible, you apply a filter to the source views referenced in the Parent-Child view.
When selecting the Parent Key Column and the Child Key Column, please keep these points in mind:
•The names of the Parent Key Column and the Child Key Column do not have to match; only the value stored in the columns has to match.
•The names of the key columns can include a hyphen. However, these special characters are not supported for key columns: #$*&
•The parent/child relationship should be one-to-many. The values in the Parent Key Column should be unique.
•Either a single line text column or a numeric column should be utilized as the key column. Calculated columns and lookup columns are not supported for use as key columns.
•The key columns must be shown in the display, as defined on the Column Definition page on the source views.