Define a Visualization Link Chain

Use the Links page to define:

Which Link Chains are displayed on a Visualization.
Order in which Links Nodes are displayed on the Visualization window legend.

To define a Visualization Link Chain:

Open the Visualization Manager.
Optional: Select a scope and subfolder.
Select Create New.
The Visualization Properties window opens.
Select the Links page.

Define which Link Chains to display on the Visualization:

Select Add.
The Edit Link Chain window opens.

Define general properties:


Property	Description
Name	Provide a name for the link.
Link Color	Select a color for the link.
Show this link chain by default	Select this check box to make the chain visible by default. If you clear this check box, the item is still displayed on the Visualization legend, but no data is retrieved until the user explicitly selects the check box next to it.

Select Add, and then select a Business Object to add to the Relationship link chain. A list of all available objects that are related to the last entry in the list appears.
Example: If we started with Change Requests, we would see only Relationships related to Changes. After we choose the Relationship to Problems, we would see Problem Relationships, and so forth.
After you select a Relationship, the Link Member window opens.
Note: When you first open this window, it has only one item, the name of the main object for the Visualization. In the example above, we have already added one Relationship.
Specify details of the Business Object in the Link Chain:
- Show text on link:
  Select this check box to always display text on the Visualization’s link line in the Visualization. For example, you might put in text like "Depends on" or "Uses."
- Show join reason on link:
  (Only available if the Relationship uses a join table and has join reasons enabled). Select this check box to display the join reason on the link line.
- Filter, Limit to Type:
  Select this check box to limit the displayed nodes to just a single type (if the Relationship is to a group). For example, when displaying Configuration Items, you could select to only show Computers.
- Filter, Limit by join reason:
  (Only available if the Relationship uses a join table and has join reasons enabled). Select this check box to limit the displayed nodes to ones that have a particular join reason.
- Filter, Limit Expression:
  Select this check box to limit to use an Expression to limit the records. Only children that meet the Expression condition will be displayed.
- Show this object on Visualization:
  Normally, when you put an object into the Visualization, you want nodes to be displayed for all children. However, you might want the intermediate object to be ignored, and the children of the "hidden" node be displayed as though they linked directly to the parent. With the Change/Knowledge Article example, we would turn off this check box for Problems and Incidents.
Select OK.

Repeat last link object:
If the parent and the child of the last item in the chain both point to the same type of object (in the example, Configuration Item), then you can make the Visualization extend the chain via the last Relationship multiple times. This has the same result as adding the Configuration Item (via CI links Upstream Items) multiple times into the list.

Example: You have a configuration item A with upstream configuration items B, C and D. If B also has upstream items E and F, and F has upstream items G and H, all of these would be shown. If you didn’t repeat, you would just see A, B, C and D.

If the last Relationship in the chain does not have the same parent/child, the repeat option is disabled.
Suppress links between an object and itself:
Select this check box to ignore Relationships that point directly to themselves. If this check box is cleared, links are shown via short arrows that go from and to the same object.

Example: If configuration item A had a Relationship to configuration item A, that would not be shown.
Select Save.