User Guide: Recursive Business Modules

Recursive modules make it possible to define parent/child relationships between entities within the same business module.

General use cases for this could be defining subsidiaries under parent companies or relationships between a project and sub-projects.

The relationship between entities involving recursive business modules can be viewed in the breadcrumb of entity sites.

In this example, we are located on the site of a company which has one or more subsidiaries:

Clicking the company in the breadcrumb we can get a list of subsidiaries:

1. Click the company name in the breadcrumb.
2. Click e.g. "Subsidiary". (The name of this button is dependent on the configuration. If recursive business modules were used for e.g. projects to create sub-projects, this button could e.g. be called "Sub-projects.")

3. The number followed by the "Companies" label lets the user know which entity we are viewing subsidiaries of. This is the internal ID of the parent company.
4. In the list we can see all the companies which are subsidiaries of the parent company. In this case, the company "Concretely Inc." is a subsidiary of "Quaxo Inc." (which has an internal ID of 2).

For subsidiaries one can also view the immediate parent company in the Companies list:

In the following example, we have a company with several projects:

It is important to note that in this case, as can be seen from the list in the following image, the project on which we are currently located (Development of CM-215), is registered under the company "Quaxo Inc.", despite the company in the breadcrumb being "Concretely Inc.".

This is because the chain of projects and sub-projects start with the Development of Machine PW-376 project, which is developed under Concretely Inc.

Creating new recursive entities, e.g. sub-projects or company subsidiaries can be done from both WorkPoint 365 in the browser or from WorkPoint Express.

In this example, we are going to create a new subsidiary for a company using the Create Entity wizard in WorkPoint 365 in the browser. In this example, we are located on a company site:

5. On the company site, we click a  MyTools button called "New Company". This opens the Create Entity wizard:

6. Note that the company we were on when we started the wizard is pre-filled as "Parent Company" in the wizard. If the wizard was launched from the root site of the solution or from another entity which is not a company, this field would not be pre-filled. Note that the name of this field is dependent on the configuration of recursive business modules on your solution. This field could e.g. be called "Parent project" if working with a parent/sub-project setup.

7. Another company can be selected as parent company by clicking the arrow in the Parent Company field.

In this example, similarly to the previous one, we will create a new subsidiary of a company. In this example, we will do so from WorkPoint Express:

8. In WorkPoint Express, we select the Companies business module.
9. In an empty space in the list of companies, we right-click and select "Create Company".

This launches the Create Company wizard:

10. In the "Create Company" wizard, we can select the "Parent Company" field and select which company if any should be the parent of the company we are currently creating.