Find Your Way Around a Chart
Goal
Work with a page that shows its records as a chart — nested inside each other — rather than as a list. An organisational chart, a category tree, a bill of materials.
You will know you are on one because the records are indented under each other, with a search box above them and a pane beside them.
How a chart is laid out
The chart is on one side; what you have selected is on the other.
That split is the point. On a list, opening a record takes the list away. Here a single click fills the pane beside the chart and the chart stays where it is, so you can look at one record, then the next, without losing your place.
Drag the divider between the two to give one side more room. It is remembered for this page. On a narrow screen they take turns, with a way back to the chart.
Moving around
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Open a branch | Click the arrow beside it |
| Close it again | Click the arrow again |
| Select a record | Click its row — it appears in the pane beside the chart |
| Open its own page | Double-click the row |
| Move without the mouse | Arrow keys: → opens, ← closes, ← again jumps to the row above it in the tree; ↑ ↓ move; Home and End go to the ends |
Only the part you have opened is loaded, so a chart with thousands of records in it opens as quickly as one with six.
Finding something
Type into the box at the top of the chart.
Matches come back under the records they sit in, not as a flat list — so two branches with the same name are told apart by what is above them. Every line is clickable, the chain included.
Choosing a result puts you back in the chart with that record selected and opened down to, which is usually where you were trying to get. Press Escape, or clear the box, to get the whole chart back with everything you had opened still open.
If more match than fit, the chart says so. Narrow the search rather than scrolling.
Looking at one branch on its own
Select a record and press the crosshair beside the search box.
The chart re-opens with that record at the top and a trail above it saying where you are. Click a step in the trail to climb back out, or All for the whole chart. While the chart is focused, searching looks inside that branch only — a result you could not then see would be no use.
Where the chart is focused travels in the address bar, so you can send somebody a link to this branch, opened at this record. So does what you have selected.
Some charts do not offer this; that is the person who built the page choosing not to.
Records of more than one kind
A chart can show more than one kind of record. An organisational chart shows units nesting inside each other, and under each unit the people who work in it — with their picture instead of the unit glyph.
Different kinds behave differently when you select them, and that is deliberate:
- Some show their form, which you can edit and save exactly as on the record's own page.
- Some show a card — the record laid out to be read. A chart is where you read an organisation, not where you edit an employee; open that person's own page from their own list to change something.
The buttons above the chart — New, Delete — act on the chart's own kind of record. If you select a person in an organisational chart, Delete stays inactive: it deletes units, and a person is not one.
What to do when the chart looks wrong
- A record you expect is missing — check whether the branch above it is closed, or search for it by name.
- Something sits at the top that should be inside something else — its parent has not been set. Select it and fill in the parent field in the pane beside the chart.
- An arrow opens onto nothing — you may not have access to the records underneath. Ask whoever administers your environment.