About Relationships

Use Relationships to connect Business Objects to each other so that they can share data.

For example:

• Track Business Object history (example: Notes, emails, record changes, etc.) in a Supporting Object such as a Journal.
• Show related Business Objects in a Form Arrangement on a record (example: 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 (example: 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 (example: 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 (example: Incident Links Problem).
• One-to-many: The parent object can link to multiple instances of the child object (example: Incident Owns Journals).

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