Viewing Relationships in Your Views

Overview

SharpCloud provides several powerful ways to explore and analyse relationships directly within your views. These features allow you to understand how items are connected in context, whether you are investigating dependencies, influence, or structural relationships across your data.

Relationship exploration is dynamic and context-sensitive, meaning the same item can show different relationship patterns depending on the active view and its configuration.

This article covers:

1. Radial View

2. Show In View

3. Behaviour on Click

4. Relationship scope settings

   1. Direct

   2. One Level Removed

   3. Two Levels Removed

   4. Up/Down Only)

This is the default view:

Radial View

The Radial View is an interactive relationship exploration mode that appears when selecting an item. Although it is not a saved or persistent view, it provides a focused way to visualise how an item connects to others.

When enabled and relationships are visible in the view:

• Clicking an item highlights its related items

• Unrelated items are faded or pushed out of focus

• Clicking the same item again brings it into the center, displaying a radial layout of its connected items

This radial layout helps users quickly understand the structure of connections around a single item.

The relationships displayed are always influenced by the current view. For example:

• In a Timeline view, relationships are shown in relation to time positioning

• In a Grid or Compare view, relationships reflect positioning on axes

• In a Layer view, relationships are shown across categories

This makes the Radial View a contextual tool rather than a standalone representation.

Behaviour on Click

By default, clicking an item opens its panels. However, this behaviour can be changed to prioritise relationship exploration.

To configure:

• Go to View Setup → Relationships tab

• Enable Behaviour on click = Highlight related items

When this setting is active:

• Clicking an item highlights its related network instead of opening panels

• This allows rapid exploration without interrupting the view

You can also change this behaviour quickly using the dropdown next to the Show In View button.

Relationship Scope Settings

The scope of relationships displayed when selecting an item can be configured using the Advanced settings in the Relationships tab.

Directly Related Only (Default)
Shows only items that have a direct connection to the selected item.

• This is the most precise and least cluttered option.

One Level Removed
Includes directly related items and items connected to those first-level items.

• This expands the visible network and reveals indirect relationships.

Two Levels Removed
Extends the network further by including another layer of connections. This is useful for identifying broader patterns but can increase visual complexity.

Up/Down Only
Uses category hierarchy rather than distance.

• It shows items in categories above and below the selected item and continues this chain through related items. Items within the same category are excluded, making this useful for hierarchical or layered analysis.

Show In View

Once related items are highlighted, the Show In View feature allows you to convert that temporary highlight into a filtered view.

When selected:

• All unrelated items are removed from the view

• Only the selected item and its related network remain

• The layout and positioning of items are preserved within the current view

This is particularly useful when you want to focus analysis on a specific subset of items or present a simplified version of a complex dataset.

Interaction Flow

A typical workflow for exploring relationships might include:

• Selecting an item to highlight its related items

• Adjusting the relationship scope to broaden or narrow the network

• Clicking again to activate the radial view for deeper inspection

• Using Show In View to isolate the network

• Switching between views to understand relationships in different contexts

Key Considerations

• The visible relationships depend on both view configuration and relationship settings

• Larger relationship scopes (e.g., Two Levels Removed) may impact performance or clarity in large datasets

• Radial View is temporary and interaction-driven, not saved

• Behaviour on Click should be chosen based on whether your priority is content editing or relationship exploration

Best Practices

• Use Directly Related Only for focused analysis and minimal clutter

• Use One or Two Levels Removed to explore broader networks and indirect connections

• Use Up/Down Only when working with hierarchical or category-based structures

• Use Show In View to isolate and present a clean subset of related items

• Combine with filters to refine results and reduce noise

• Switch between views to gain different perspectives on the same relationships

• Use highlight mode for quick exploration and filtering for more permanent focus