Valid to use cross reference to make nesting shallower?

10-19 Concepts
1

I have a variation on a theme I see elsewhere, but a possible solution that I don’t see discussed…

The question: Expand the number of decimals to make the hierarchy explicit, or shallow nest and use cross referencing to show relationships?

See below for an example.

Scenario:

I meet with clients online (regularly) and keep notes on our sessions
Those clients work in organisations
Many of those clients came to me via agents to whom I pay a commission

Those agents like their reports, different ones for each.
This is much easier if automated through some tool - google workspace will do.

Practice
—agents
-----orgs
---------clients
---------------sessions

the nested structure doesn’t fit into the JD numbers well - but I could have:

(A) Professional Practice
– [C]agents
-------ID’s
– [C]organisations
-------ID’s
– [C] clients
-------ID’s including…
-------sessions

I can report on the documents in folder, and create a cross reference to show relationships and create groupings in reports

Sessions have structured session notes in them, files named with date (yymmdd) and JD id number

the link to the client is explicit but the links between peers in the hierarchy is not, which is where cross-linking comes in - either by a heading in the docs, or more simply tags on the folder, which a google app in a workspace can use as in grouping function

PS - I’m at the stage in the workbook where it says not to think about numbers yet!

2

works for Bear searches too - with both tags and metadata text

3

Check out expand an area (which was written after the workbook) … might help here?

Clients alphabetically by name might make more sense than primarily sorting them by ID?

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4

Yes, I have checked that out, and in a way this is a response to that - I say 'in a way because this was on the initial read through, I’m jumping the gun a little in terms of days/weeks into the workbook activities,

And yes, on thinking more, I remembered the “you remember clients by name” in the workbook and it does more sense with name first and [id] after - in Bear.

One reason for using ID’s in records was to de-name them from the google workspace, but I think I’m going to go with bear and with cross linking in metadata tables.

I don’t see anything on flattening structures in the section you mention, just expanding them - did I miss something? I’ll re-read.

Thanks for your answer, dead chuffed to receive it!

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5

Agh, yes - the rules, principles and examples are really helpful -

As a freelancer, the jobs you manage are organised by client, product, then job.* Use this hierarchy in your system. Don’t worry that it breaks the area → category → ID structure. See figure 13.21A below.

Use natural hierarchies.

I’ll have a rethink…

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