Additional relationship types

Multiple relationship types are available for selection with Orbit connect.

Relationships are defined by selecting common fields in related data tables. Relationship types determine how data in these tables join together.

You can choose from the following relationship type options:

  • One to Many

  • One to One

  • Many to One

‘One-to-many’ is the default relationship type option. The ‘One to One’ and ‘Many to One’ options allow you to efficiently add to your main data by matching values in a parent table.

These options enable you to use a ‘lookup-style’ data join. This allows you to bring additional columns of data into your system by matching to a value in the parent table.

Pre-requisites

  • Before using additional relationship types, you must first define the data sources that you wish to draw data from. See Data sources.

  • You can check the data sources in Data Mappings by opening the option menu and clicking Edit on a given data source. See Data mappings.

Benefits

  • Greater flexibility when setting up, maintaining, and enhancing your system

  • Easily add extra data to your system without spending substantial time redefining it

  • Minimise the amount of necessary data required in each record

  • Add additional data to individuals, sites, products (or any other type of) records, or add geodemographic information to addresses

  • The parent data record doesn’t need to be updated. A single code is used to efficiently append many additional columns to each record instead of storing the additional data against every record in the original source data (and parent table).

You might use these additional relationship types to enhance your original data by:

- Adding demographic or Geo demographic data to your current records

- Enhancing product information by matching it with a product code

By using this feature you can enrich your data, making it more comprehensive and suitable for customer segmentation and analysis.

Adding additional relationship types

To add additional relationship types:

  1. Go to System Builds.

  2. On the system you want to add data to, open the option menu and click Edit.

  3. Click the + icon between your user defined tables.

  4. Choose how you want display your additional data:

    • Add above ‘Orders’

    • Add next to ‘Orders’

    In this example we’re choosing Add next to ‘Orders’.

  5. Search for and select your additional table.

    In this example we’re selecting Geo demographics.

  6. A Relationship Properties side panel menu is now displayed.

    Select your Relationship Type:

    • One to Many: Match to zero, one, or many

    • One to One: Match to exactly one record

    • Many to One: Match many to one

  7. Select your Contacts Table Column. We’re matching to Postcode.

  8. Select the matching table column. In this case, we’re matching to Postcode in our Geo demographics table.

  9. Click Apply.

    Note: Hover over your user defined tables to see the currently selected relationship type.

  10. Save your system.

You’ve now successfully added a new relationship type to your system build. You can repeat this process to join further data using different relationship types, as required.

You can now build and deploy your system to view the additional data you’ve appended to your system. See Building a system and Deploying a system.