About Relationships

A Relationship is an association between two Business Objects that allows data to be pulled together in meaningful ways. For example, the Incident Business Object is often in a Relationship with the Customer Business Objects so that Incidents can be associated with the appropriate Customers. When Business Objects are in a Relationship, one object is known as the parent and the other is the child. Use Relationships to connect Business Objects to each other so that they can share data. For example:

• Track Business Object history (ex: Notes, e-mails, record changes, etc.) in a Supporting Object such as a Journal.
• Show related Business Objects in a Form Arrangement on a record (ex: Show a related Problem on an Incident record).
• Add Approval support to a Business Object.

  

Major Business Objects can have two types of Relationships:

• Owns: A Major Business Object (the parent) owns another Business Object (the child, typically a Supporting Object). The child object belongs to the parent object and exists only as long as the parent object exists (ex: Incident Owns Journals, Change Request Owns Tasks).
• Link: A Major Business Object (the parent) is linked to another Business Object (the child, typically another Major Object). One is a parent and one is a child, but the child can exist without the parent (ex: Customer Links SLA, Problem Links Knowledge Articles).

Supporting Business Objects can have one type of Relationship:

• Owned By: A Supporting Object (the child) is owned by a Major Object (the parent). The child object belongs to the parent object and exists only as long as the parent object exists.

Relationships cannot be created for Lookup Objects, but Lookup Objects can be selected as children or parents in Relationships created for Major and Supporting Objects.

A Relationship can be:

• One-to-one: The parent object can link to one instance of a child object (ex: Incident Links Problem).
• One-to-many: The parent object can link to multiple instances of the child object (ex: Incident Owns Journals).

CSM provides many Relationships for its OOTB Business Objects. Use these as-is, edit them, or create your own using the Relationship Editor (accessed from within a Blueprint in CSM Administrator).

The Relationship Wizard is the most convenient way to create new Relationships. Advanced Users can use the Relationship Properties window to define more detailed properties for a Relationship. Both of these tools are accessed from the Relationship Editor.

Note: A full list of Relationships is beyond the scope of this document. Export a schema document from CSM Administrator (Create a Blueprint>Tools>Export Schema) to view a full list of Relationships associated with a particular type of Business Object (ex: Major). To view a list of Relationships associated with one particular Business Object (ex: Incident), you can export a Business Object schema.