[Resolved] Relationship Migration – (PART2) – Relationship Editing Differences

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[nedG]

I have a LIVE website that is using the "old" relationship method provided by WP-TYPES

I wanted to take advantage of Layouts as well as the "new" relationships method and repeatable fields provided by WP-TYPES, so I moved a copy of my website to a DEV server and went through the necessary relationship migration process.

Everything seems to be OK (for the most part 🙂 )... except that there seems to be some major differences in the way Relationships can be edited on the screen when compared to the old method. It seems to have lost some wonderful functionality. Maybe there is something I am missing?

So my site is a tourism site and I have a complex "events" system that includes the following custom post types and relationships...

=== CPTS=====
EVENTS - They are simply the names of the EVENTS that I have
EVENT VENUES - They are simply the names of the EVENT VENUES that I have where EVENTS can be held.

This actually gets even more complicated because EVENT INSTANCES don't just need to be held at EVENT VENUES, they can be held at other local locations too. So in reality I have other CPTs that are involved. I had to develop other relationships with these additional CPTs and EVENT INSTANCES. This is nothing new and it existed in the old site as well as the new site.

RESTAURANTS - They are simply the names of the RESTAURANT locations that I have where EVENTS can be held.
THINGS TO DO- They are simply the names of the THINGS TO DO locations that I have where EVENTS can be held.
HOTELS - They are simply the names of the HOTEL locations that I have where EVENTS can be held.
and so on... (see included screenshots)

EVENT INSTANCES - This originally was an intermediary post that contains each of the date information instances for each EVENT. There can be multiple EVENT INSTANCES for a single EVENT.

==== CPT RELATIONSHIPS====
EVENT INSTANCES belong to EVENTS (many-to-one relationship)
EVENT INSTANCES belong to EVENT VENUES (many-to-one relationship)
EVENT INSTANCES belong to RESTAURANTS (many-to-one relationship)
EVENT INSTANCES belong to THINGS TO DO (many-to-one relationship)
EVENT INSTANCES belong to HOTELS (many-to-one relationship)
and so on..

The easiest thing for me to do is edit an EVENT in the admin panel. It contains most of the custom fields that I need to display on the front-end. In the old relationship method All I needed to do is edit an event and then I could scroll down to the Post Relationship section and add an EVENT INSTANCE for the EVENT and then even be able to edit other relationships that the EVENT INSTANCE had with other CPTs. (see screenshot)

So here is my problem...
In the "new" relationship method, this luxury of being able to edit the EVENT INSTANCE and some of it other relationships from directly within the EVENT edit page is not longer possible. You can no longer edit these other relationships "on the fly" from within the EVENT editing page. Now I actually have to open the EVENT INSTANCE editing page for "each" EVENT INSTANCE and edit it separately. It is quite cumbersome. Is there any easier way to do this?

[Christian Cox]

I see what you mean, and I think the only alternative in the current system is to edit or create an Event Instance before creating the Event. In the Event Instance post editor you can create a new Event in the post relationship panel, and that Event editor popup will give you the ability to fill in custom field values...though it's not very user friendly with a large number of inputs. You'll also have the ability to create other related posts in other post relationships in the same screen. Let me ask my 2nd tier team if this is something we could file as a usability issue with our developers, or if this would be classified as a feature request. There's some gray area here so I'm not quite sure where it falls. I will let you know what I find out.

[nedG]

Thanks for checking on that for me. I LOVE using the new features that come along with the new relationships migration.. but losing some old functionalities really causes an issue with regards to efficiency.

If there is a better way of attacking this whole
EVENT >> EVENT INSTANCES
EVENT VENUES >> EVENT INSTANCES

workaround then I am willing to try.

[Christian Cox]

Okay just a quick update to let you know our 2nd tier team has escalated this to our developers as a usability issue. If some progress is made I'll keep you updated here.

[Christian Cox]

After consideration, our developers have decided not to implement changes to address this issue in the new post relationships system.