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Determine your data's relationship
When developing and managing a workflow it is important to know how the components of your data work together. Understanding which task connects to which project or which customer owns which account can help keep your data organized and allow you to create relationship among it.
In SmartSuite, not only can you store all key information within a record, but you can also easily link those records together, capturing the dynamic relationships between them.
Determine your workflow's relationships
Prior to building relationships between your records, you should brainstorm what these relationships will look like.
What type of information you’re tracking, and how the information comes together is all dependent on your workflow. You might have a list of companies, a list of projects, and a list of clients. Or potentially a list of properties, tenants, and partners.
In SmartSuite, it is best to separate these lists into separate apps within your solution.
Your properties have related partners, locations that hold tenants, and so on. Let us go on to explain how you can create these connections in your solutions.
It may be useful to map out the relationships in your workflow before creating multiple apps.
Generating relationships through linked records
Once you have set up the apps that will contain records with all of the detailed information, you can begin creating relationships between them.
SmartSuite's linked record field allows you to connect different apps
Create a link between two existing apps
The first step to developing those valuable relationships in your solution workflow is to create a linked record field.
Note: The linked record field occurs in both apps, so you can create this field in either related app.
Let's use this Sales CRM template as an example.
Once you create the linked record field, simply select the app you wish to link records from. You can now link individual records together, relating this project to these action items, for example. This will create the relationship between those two specific records.
Anytime you link two records together, the connecting link is mirrored in the other app. This allows you to see related information in each app so you know which accounts relate to which client and which client holds which account.
Create a link between two existing solutions
Not only can you create relationships between apps in one solution, but you can link across another solution.
For example, you may want to reference the team (created in another solution) that is working on that particular account. You can link the Team app from the other solutions directly as a field in the Sales CRM Accounts App.
Using linked records
Workflows consistently adjust or grow over time. By creating relationships between your apps, you can use your linked record fields to see all relevant information in any app in one click.
Want to see a contact's information related to the account without leaving your app?
Simply enlarge any linked record field to see additional fields for that record.
Linked records are important for keeping consistent information across your workflow!
Now that you have created linked records, learn more about how you use linked fields to create data look-ups, counts, and rollups.
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