Reading lines in graphical views

Every graphical view draws connections between boxes. What such a line says is carried by four properties — and they mean the same thing in every view.

The shape says nothing

All lines are curved. The route is pure drawing: it carries no meaning, which is why it looks the same everywhere. Some views used to draw right-angled steps and others curves — switching between them, you read the difference in shape as a difference in meaning, and there was none.

Two properties, two statements

A line says two things, and the two are independent of each other.

The stroke says whether the relationship exists.

	Meaning
solid	The relationship exists.
dashed	It does not: it is only planned, it is meant to go away, or it did not yet exist on the selected date.

The colour says what kind it is.

Colour	Meaning	Examples
neutral (grey)	It structures the picture: reporting lines, decomposition, order.	reports to, is part of, depends on
accent	It connects across: who performs something, who is accountable, what belongs where.	performs, is accountable for, is a member of, matrix relationship, shareholding
warning	No meaning is recorded for this relationship type — the picture cannot classify it. A hint for administration, not a flaw in your data.
green, dashed	to be created (draft)
red, dashed	to be deleted, or gone as of the selected date
amber, dashed	to be changed (draft)

It was not always like this. Previously “dashed” meant nine different things depending on the view, and in value creation it was even the regular case — the dependency is the only kind of connection there and was dashed anyway. Switching between views, you had to learn the visual language again each time.

If one of your own relationship types shows up in the warning colour, that can be fixed: on the relationship type, under Meaning, set the field x-graph-role (see Relationship Types).

The legend says what is in the picture

As soon as a view shows more than one kind — or even just one dashed kind — a row of short line samples with their meaning appears above the canvas. It is derived from the connections actually drawn: what does not appear in the picture does not appear in the legend either, and the pattern in the legend is the same as the one in the picture.

Where a picture shows a single solid kind — one area’s org chart, say, in which every line means “is the parent of” — the row stays away. It would have nothing to distinguish.

The arrowhead shows the direction of the relationship

If a relationship type is configured as directed, its line carries an arrowhead. It follows the relationship, not the drawing: with a decomposition such as “is part of”, the whole sits above and the part below, yet the arrow points from the part to the whole. Whether a type counts as directed is set by the tenant admin (see Relationship types).

Hovering a line shows where it leads

Move the pointer over a line and it stands out and both boxes at its ends receive a glow. In a dense picture several lines run close together; the highlighted line alone answers “where does it lead?” only halfway.

Colour and dash pattern stay untouched while you do this — they carry the meaning and must not change just because you are looking.

What a dashed outline means

The lines in a diagram are one thing — the outlines of boxes, cards and tiles are another. They follow the same logic, and they do so everywhere in the program, not just in diagrams:

Dashed means: not definitively there. Solid means: the thing exists.

The colour says which kind of “not definitive” it is:

What you see	What it means	Where it appears
dashed in a status colour	a state: it is to be created, removed or changed	draft card above a list, draft circle, pending cell in the relationship matrix
dashed neutral, with content	it is not this thing’s own, binding content	replicate, an inherited colour value, “no access”
dashed neutral, without content	there is nothing here yet — or something can go here	empty states, file drop areas, “add filter”

A container, by contrast, is solid: a value stream with sub-chains, a company in the org chart, a signpost to another page. These things exist, and a dashed outline would have claimed they were provisional.

Where the stroke alone would say too little, a second sign joins it. A replicate therefore carries a small mark at its top-left corner — it stays visible even when the entity type has a texture of its own that hides the hatching.