Using the relationship hierarchy
The relationship hierarchy displays a contact's relationships with other contacts using a tree-type view.
There are three tabs in this section, allowing you to display three different organizational structures that focus on three different types of relationships:
Company
Organizes contacts based on their departments, companies, and parent companies. When Capital Markets functionality is enabled, it can display names of funds that are owned by an institution.
For capital markets, a company is a corporate client that issues securities. An institution is an institutional client that trades securities through a capital markets firm. A fund is a pool of money, belonging to individual investors, that is managed by a fund manager. A fund belongs to an institution.
Household
Organizes contacts based on their households.
Reports To
Organizes users based on who they report to. This essentially displays the internal structure of your own company.
The Reports To tab only appears when a user is selected in the contact list.
All three of these tabs also display relationships defined by relationship custom fields. For more information about how to create a custom field, see Customizing NexJ CRM .
When you select a contact in the contact list, the hierarchy will display that contact's position in one of these structures. You can move between these structures by clicking the corresponding tabs. For example, if John Smith works for the Sales department of NexJ Systems, when John Smith is selected in the contact list and the Company tab is selected in the Hierarchy, the Hierarchy will show John Smith under Sales, and Sales under NexJ Systems. However, if the Household tab is selected, then the Hierarchy will show John Smith in the Smith household with the other contacts in his household.
Relationship hierarchy directionality
The node above a given contact is often referred to as its parent node, and a contact below it referred to as its child node.
To move through the relationship hierarchy:
- Select a contact in the hierarchy to display its profile on the right side of the workspace.
- Click the Expand tree node button
to expand a node in the tree and view that node's children. - Click the Collapse tree node button
to collapse a node in the tree.
The direction icon (either 
or 
) indicates a relationship custom field; a particular type of additional field whose value is another contact which is used to define a relationship between two contacts. The label beside the arrow is the name of the field and describes the relationship; for example, a 'Lawyer' custom field could indicate a relationship between a lawyer and client.
Note that relationships defined by relationship custom fields are not considered child or parent nodes in the relationship hierarchy.
The direction in which the arrow points tells you what the exact relationship between the two contacts is. The contact the arrow points to is the contact who holds the defined role. For example, suppose John has a lawyer named Betty. In the Hierarchy, the arrow would be displayed under John, and if that node were expanded, you would see Betty. The arrow would be pointing from John to Betty, making Betty the lawyer, and John her client. For more information on relationship custom fields, see Managing custom fields .
By expanding successive nodes in the tree, you can navigate the hierarchy to see how contacts are related to each other and understand the organization structure that a contact is a part of.
You can also simplify a very expanded tree to focus on one specific contact. To do this, right-click on the contact and select Show Hierarchy . All of the nodes will disappear except the ones directly related to the selected contact.
Rolling up an activity summary
Selecting a contact in the relationship hierarchy displays the corresponding profile information on the right side of the workspace. If you click the Journal tab and click the Activities subtab, you can roll up the activities of a contact, household, or company.
In the Activities journal, click the Options button 
and select the Show Activities from Children menu item to 'roll up' the activities for the selected contact's children. This lets you see all of the activities for all of the child contacts that are nested below a given contact. Once you are finished reviewing the child activities you can select the Show Activities from Children menu item again to deselect it and return to the original view of activities.