Hi romebot2,
I’ve been having a play around with this, and I think there is a way you could structure it without needing to create a separate Migrations Item Type.
I’ve attached another small demo file so you can have a look at the setup and experiment with the different Views yourself.
romebot2 demo 2.aeon (112.1 KB)
From what you’ve described, the main goal seems to be getting a bird’s-eye view of several people’s lives - where they lived, when they were there, and where those periods overlap.
For that, I don’t think you necessarily need a separate Migrations Item Type or a Story Arc for each Person.
In the demo, I’ve kept the structure quite simple. Each period that somebody lived somewhere is an Event, for example:
Person 1
Person 2
Each Lived in… Event has:
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a Start and End date covering the period they lived there;
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a relationship to the relevant Person; and
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a relationship to the relevant Location.
For example, Person 1 Lived in New York is related to Person 1 and New York, with its dates showing how long Person 1 lived there.
That gives us the three pieces of information we need - who, where and when - and the different Views can then organise those same Events in different ways.
Grouping Events by Person in the sidebar
You can also organise the Events panel in the sidebar by their Person relationships. This makes it easier to see which Events belong to each Person without needing to use nesting.
To set this up:
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Open the menu for Events in the sidebar.
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Under Panel Options, select Group By.
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Choose Person.
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Tick all of the People you want displayed, including No Person if you want to see Events that haven’t yet been associated with a Person.
The Events panel will then be divided into sections for each Person, with their related Events displayed underneath. You can expand or collapse these groups as needed.
Including No Person can also be useful for quickly spotting any Events that haven’t yet been linked to someone.
Timeline
For the main Timeline View, I’ve grouped the Events by Person.
View setup:
Because each Event is already related to the relevant Person, grouping by Person creates a separate lane for each Person and displays their Events within that lane.
This gives you a clearer general Timeline where you can follow each Person’s Events without everything being mixed together. Each Person’s group can also be collapsed or expanded, so you can hide the Events for People you’re not currently interested in and open them again when needed.
Timeline grouped by Location
I’ve also added a second Timeline View called Timeline grouped by Location.
This uses the same Events, but groups them by Location instead.
View setup:
This is probably the most useful View for the bird’s-eye view you described.
For example, under New York you can see both Person 1 and Person 2 and the dates they lived there. Because their Events are displayed against the same timeline, you can see the period where they overlap.
The same happens under Chicago, where both People lived there for a period at the same time.
If you want to quickly focus on a particular Location, select Locations in the sidebar and click the number beside that Location. This will quickly filter the View to show just the Events associated with that Location. Click the number again to remove the filter and return to the full View.
So you don’t need to look through all the surrounding Events when you specifically want to compare where People were living, and you can quickly narrow the View to an individual Location when needed.
Events, People and Locations
I’ve included separate Events, People, and Locations Spreadsheet Views as well, with each sorted by Label.
These aren’t necessary for the visualisation itself, but they give you a straightforward way to see and manage the underlying information.
Events
View setup:
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Content: Events
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Sorted by: Label
People
View setup:
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Content: People
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Sorted by: Label
Locations
View setup:
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Content: Locations
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Sorted by: Label
Adding relationships to several Events at once
Spreadsheet View can also be useful when you need to add the same relationship to several Events rather than editing each Event individually.
For example, if you’ve created several Events belonging to Person 1, you can add the Person 1 relationship to all of them together.
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Open the Events Spreadsheet View.
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Select the Events you want to update by clicking their row numbers on the left-hand side of the Spreadsheet.
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Windows: Hold Ctrl while clicking row numbers to select individual Events, or Shift to select a range.
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Mac: Hold Command (⌘) while clicking row numbers to select individual Events, or Shift to select a range.
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With the Events selected, find Person in the Inspector and select the Person you want to relate them to.
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Select the Person you want to relate them to.
The Person relationship will then be added to all of the selected Events.
In this example, I’ve selected all three Events belonging to Person 1 and added the Person 1 relationship to them at the same time.
The same multiple-selection approach can be useful whenever you need to add the same relationship or other shared information to several items.
I’ve kept this example deliberately simple based on what you’ve described, rather than adding additional Item Types or structure that you may not need.
Have a play with the attached file and the different Views and see whether this is close to the way you’re wanting to organise the information. If there are other parts of the people’s lives that you want to compare alongside their Locations, let us know and we can look at how those fit into the same structure.
Best,
Riaan
