5. Relations Data Preparation Instructions

5. Relations Data Preparation Instructions

Type of information that goes in this tab of the template:

RELATIONS records are where you indicate links between any two CONTACTS in the database.
Types of links that might be recorded as relationships:
  1. Family relationships
  2. A contact being a member of a household
  3. Employer/employee relationship between an Organization and an Individual
  4. An individual who is a primary contact at an organization
Info
For example, if a contact has a family member in your database, you could indicate that link with a RELATION record. The relationship then appears in both CONTACT's records.
Alert
RELATION records in Sumac do NOT record the dates for the start and end of a relationship in a reportable format. You would not want to save a relationship record to record someone’s employment history at a particular organization, for example, if the start and end or duration of their employment with that organization are important to you. This might be better suited to TIME DOCKET records in Sumac.

How the information entered in this tab will be handled:

  1. Every single row will be imported as a separate RELATION record.
  2. Every column in this tab represents a field in the RELATION record in Sumac.
  3. If you do not track information that belongs in a particular column in the template, leave that column blank.

Relation Type Forward/Reverse:  

When you create a new relation type, you must provide descriptive text for the relationship in both directions – forward and reverse. 
Info
For example, if A is a parent of B (the forward relation), then B is a child of A (the reverse relation). 

If you are editing information about a CONTACT A, and indicate that CONTACT A is related to CONTACT B in a certain way, then Sumac will know that CONTACT B has the reverse relationship with CONTACT A. This means that you only need to specify the relationship once, and Sumac knows it applies to both CONTACTS (though in the opposite way) (see picture below, row number 2 and 3)
Info
Some relation types (e.g. friend of) may be the same in both directions. In this case, enter the same text in both the Forward and Reverse fields (see row number 4). 

For example:

Contact A (ID)
Relation Type (Forward)
Contact B (ID)
Relation Type (Reverse)
Notes
2345 
friend of
3456
friend of



Warning
If a file has multiple rows that represent the same relationship, import will result in duplication of the relationship records.

For example:
Contact A (ID)
Relation Type (Forward)
Contact B (ID)
Relation Type (Reverse)
Notes
2345 
is parent of
6789
is child of

6789
is child of
2345
is parent of


Both rows represent the same relationship and have the same information but are mirrored. In this case both rows will be imported as Relations in Sumac.

Mandatory Fields

Mandatory Field(s)

Default Value Imported (If no data present)

Contact A

Contact A IDs column needs to match Contact ID column in the Contacts Template. IF THERE ARE NO IDs THIS TEMPLATE IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR MIGRATION.

Contact B

Contact B IDs column needs to match Contact ID column in the Contacts Template. IF THERE ARE NO IDs THIS TEMPLATE IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR MIGRATION.

Relation Type

Forward: is related to;
Reverse: is related to.


Example