Reverse Inheritance

[wussery]

I am an old time user of Ecco Pro and back in 1996 there was a thread which I started on the Merits of having Reverse
Inheritance in a new version of Ecco Pro. The discussion lead to many arguments pro and con, but due to the fact that the owners of Ecco Pro were having financial problems, a serious discussion on whether this capability could have made it into the product never saw the light of day.

What do I mean by Reverese Inheritance?

I say Reverse Inheritance, because I am not saying that the offspring should be able to inherit all data from the Parent (folder), but just the reverse. Any data entered in an offspring folder should have the "option" of flowing up to the parent folder.

We're all here because we inherited our "gene pool" (a word I'll come back to later) from our ancestors. It's a concept that's easy to grasp and I will submit can be explained to PIM users, either new or experienced. One of the continuing headaches that I've run into over the years while using Ecco Pro is the lack of EASILY associating data "UP" the "GENE POOL". I say up "GENE
POOL", because I want data to flow UPSTREAM.

There should be an option when creating a New Folder to enable the PARENT of this newly created folder to INHERIT any data that will be added to the OFFSPRING folders. An example will shed some light on the current predicament Ecco Pro users are in right now.

Neverwhere Incorporated
West Coast Division
Mike Donaldson VP
East Coast Division
Joan Dunlap VP
Midwest Division
Tom Jones VP
South Division
Michelle Anderson VP

If I assign data to the West, East, Midwest and South division folders AND have Reverse Inheritance turned ON then when I click on the Neverwhere Inc. folder it TOO will have a view into each specific division's folders. Either a copy is implicity made to the Neverwhere folder or a link is made that allows the end user to see the data that are in the OFFSPRING folders.

In addition, any data added to Michelle Anderson's folder should be viewable in the South Division folder because I turned on Reverse Inheritance when I created the South Division folder. That is all data will flow UPSTREAM. This last option means that I must be given the option to view Grandchildren data when I am at the Top Level folder. This should be an option that can also be
turned on or off.

However, there may be a time when you would not want a particular offspring's data to flow up to the Parent folder. This can be handled by a property assignment that one could put on newly created folders. When you invoke this property, the PARENT FOLDER, will have a different color than the default to show that ALL DATA IS NOT flowing upstream. An offspring
folder that you might not want to share with the parent folder, is one that might have sensitive data, such as your own Personal Folder. or a matter which is under litigation. There are many other scenarios when you might not want the Parent folder to inherit all data from the offspring and that's why I think one should have the option of number one, turning Reverse Inheritance on/off for the Parent Folder and number two, if the switch is on, the offspring can still say NO to their parents

I have been using Ultra Recall for a couple of months and I think incorporating Reverse Inheritance with UR would also be useful.

[wussery]

Please note in the previous email that Neverwhere Incorporated is at the ROOT -- Far Left, then indented one level are the divisions and then indented one level further are the specific managers of each divisions.

I had this layout on screen, but for some reason everything is left justified.

[SteveZ]

If I understand you correctly, I think that a good example of a program that provides this feature is Zoot. In Zoot this is simply called inheritence. There is an option on the folder properties dialog that allows you to select inheritence... and when you do, any items that appear in sub folders will also appear in this root folder. It is, indeed, very handy. I don't think it has an option to selectively exempt sub items from being inherited, however.

[kevina]

We are considering implementing a way to show all grandchildren for an Info Item (in the Related Items Pane) in a future version of Ultra Recall. However in the meantime, you can achieve this functionality as a simple two-step process.

Prelimary step) Create a Saved Quick Search with no criteria defined, and the "Limit search to bold item in Data Explorer pane" checkbox checked. Perhaps name this Saved Search as "Show All Grandchildren" or "Reverse Inheritance View".

1a) Navigate to the Info Item in the Data Explorer you want to see all children/grandchildren for
1b) select the Saved Search you initially created...

After creating the Saved Search, you can use steps 1a/b any time to display a "Reverse Inheritance view" of any Info Item very easily...