Relationships are a fantastically powerful feature in CiviPlus that allow you to define and manage connections between different contacts in your system. As you know, contacts in CiviPlus can be an individual or organisation, so using Relationships on top of this allows you to build complex structures which model the real world.
CiviPlus comes with a number of Relationships out of the box, but it's really easy to create new ones to suit the needs of your organisation. Some of the common Relationships shipped with CiviPlus include:
Employee of / Employer of: Linking individuals to the organisations they work for.
Is Member of / Has as Member: Connecting individuals to groups or committees they belong to.
Spouse of: Defining personal relationships between contacts.
Volunteer for / Supervises: Managing volunteer relationships and hierarchies.
Dependent of / Guardian of: Tracking family relationships and guardianship.
The Relationship Types shipped with CiviPlus are shown below:
How to create a new Relationship Type
You can create your own Relationships Types to build custom connections relevant to your organisation. For example, if you run an educational institution, you might create relationships like "Tutor of / Tutored by" or "Is Alum of / Has as Alum".
Let’s see how easy it is to create a new relationship type, using the education example above
Firstly, navigate to: Administer → Customise Data and Screens → Relationship Types and click the ADD RELATIONSHIP TYPE button.
Now you can fill in the Relationship Type form - there are just a few fields so it’s really easy to do:
Relationship Type Label A to B and Relationship Type Label B to A - as the name suggests, this is where you actually name the relationship between the two contacts. You have to enter something for the A to B connection, but you can leave the B to A connection blank if the relationship is the same each way, for example “Spouse”.
For our example, we are going to set the A to B connection to “Is Tutor to” (i.e. this is the relationship from the perspective of the Tutor), and the B to A connection to “Is Tutored by” (i.e. the relationship from the perspective of the student).
Relationship Description - Here you can put a brief description of the relationship. Hopefully the Relationship Type Labels you entered should be pretty self explanatory, but there’s no harm adding some detail if you think it is needed.
Contact Type A and Contact Type B - In our example both contact types are individuals - it wouldn’t make sense to have an organisation as a Tutor. However, you might have created a custom Contact Types called Tutor and Student, in which case you could use these to make sure that Students couldn’t be give a relationship that made them Tutors. For other relationships you might choose Individual and Organisation as Contact Types, for example as with the Employee / Employer Relationship Type that is included out of the box.
Relationship Type is Active - as with many components in CiviPlus, you can decide whether you want the relationship to be active/available from the get go, or whether you want to enable it at a later date.
Generate tokens for this relationship type - field tokens are covered elsewhere in the User Guide, but in short they allow you to “merge” field values into emails or letters that you create. By selecting this option you will be able to include this relationship as part of any personalised communications you send.
The image below below shows what the configured Relationship Type would look like.
How to create a new Relationship
Let's look at how you actually create a relationship between two contacts. There are a number of different ways of doing this, including performing bulk actions, but for now we’ll just show the simplest way.
1. Go to the Contact Summary page for one of the contacts that you want to be in the relationship, it doesn’t matter which “end” you pick. In this example we are choosing Cynthia Jones, who will be Tutoring Joan Smith.. Click the ACTIONS button on the top left of the screen, and then select Add Relationship option.
2. Now we start to complete the Relationship form from the perspective of Cynthia.
Firstly choose the Relationship Type - Cynthia is going to be Joan’s Tutor, so we chose “Is Tutor to”.
Next we choose one or more Contacts who Cynthia is going to Tutor - start typing a name in the field and a list of hits will appear. Select the one(s) that you want, in this case of course it is “Joan Smith”.
Now you have the option to enter a Start Date and End Date for the relationship. Start Date is relevant for most relationships, and if an end date is entered the relationship is automatically set to Inactive when this date is reached. As we are creating a new relationship we will just enter a Start Date.
You can enter a Description (although the name of the Relationship Type is normally sufficient), and any Notes that may be of interest.
The next two fields cover the Permissions that the two contacts in a relationship have to view and/or update each other's details. If a relationship is created between two contacts User 1 and User 2 and the Permissions box is set to allow User 1 'View' access to User 2, then when User 1 is logged in they can view details about User 2 using a Profile in View mode. If the permission is set to 'View and Update' then User 1 can also update details about User 2 with a profile in Edit mode. These settings are almost always set to “None” for both ends of the relationship, as there are only a few specific use cases where anything else is necessary.
And lastly, you can decide whether you want this new relationship to be Enabled. Typically if it is a new one you would say “Yes”, but you can make the Relationship Inactive if you uncheck this option.
3. Click the ✔ SAVE RELATIONSHIP button to save the new relationship
You can see the new relationship by visiting the Relationships tab of the Contract record
How to use Relationships
Relationships are such an important part of CiviPlus it’s worth mentioning some of the ways in which you can use them.
Searching and Reporting: CiviPlus’s search and reporting features allow you to filter/segment contacts based on their relationships. For example, you can search for all employees of a particular organisation or generate a report of all volunteers supervised by a specific person.
Automated Relationship Creation: You can automate the creation of relationships using CiviPlus's rules and workflows. For example, when a new employee is added to the database, a relationship can automatically be created between the employee and their employer.
Dynamic Relationships: Relationships can be dynamic, changing based on conditions or triggers within CiviPlus. For instance, if a student graduates, their relationship might change from "Student of" to "Alumnus of."
Permissions: You can use relationships to decide who can do and see what within CiviPlus.
Organisational Structures: You can use relationships to model complex real world structures, such as head office and branch, nuclear and extended family etc.
Self-Service Portal: Access to many of the features in the Portal, such as My Organisations, is controlled by relationships.