Relationships (Infotype 1001)

Definition

Infotype that defines the Relationships between different objects.

Use

You indicate that a employee or user holds a position by creating a relationship infotype record between the position and the employee or user. Relationships between various organizational units form the organizational structure in your enterprise. You identify the tasks that the holder of a position must perform by creating relationship infotype records between individual tasks and a position.

Creating and editing relationship infotype records is an essential part of setting up information in the Organizational Management component. Without relationships, all you have are isolated pieces of information.

You must decide the types of relationship record you require for your organizational structure.

Structure

There are many types of possible relationships between different objects. Each individual relationship is actually a subtype or category of the Relationships infotype.

Certain relationships can only be assigned to certain objects. That means that when you create relationship infotype records, you must select a relationship that is suitable for the two objects involved. For example, a relationship between two organizational units might not make any sense for a work center and a job.

Organizational Management includes a predefined set of standard relationships. You can select from those, or you can create other relationships. For further information, see the Implementation Guide (IMG) under Organizational Management  Basic Settings  Data Model Enhancement  Infotype Maintenance.

You can create and edit numerous relationship records for a single object. An organizational unit can be related to several different organizational units: to a position, for example, as well as to a work center.

Integration

The benefit of defining relationship records lies in the reporting results that you obtain when you report on particular relationships between objects in an organizational plan.

This happens as follows:

1. When you start a report, you enter a chain of relationships or a certain number of relationships in which you are interested, for example Organizational Unit -> Position -> Employee. This chain of relationships is known as an Evaluation path.

2. The system then traces the different structures in your organizational plan, and reports on all objects that are involved in the named evaluation path.