Displaying complicated parent/child relation

I have four lists, they are claims, deviations, tasks and costs

  • A claim can have deviations and tasks as children
  • A deviation can be, but does not have to be, a child of a claim
  • A deviation can have tasks and costs as children
  • Tasks and costs can not have children

So a possible scenario could be:

Claim 1
 - Deviation 1.1
  - Task 1.1.1
  - Task 1.1.2
  - Cost 1.1.1
 - Deviation 1.2
  - Task 1.2.1
  - Cost 1.2.1
  - Cost 1.2.2
 - Task 1.1
 - Task 1.22

Deviation 1
 - Task 1.1
 - Cost 1.1

Keep in mind that I can not display my data in a tree view like this, for two reasons

  • There are no 'folder' type items, they are all objects with different attributes
  • I want to give the user as much information as possible without too much clicking

At the moment I am using two grids, one grid to display all claims, the other grid to display all deviations

Example claim/Deviation grid

Title           | Description    | Created by    | Department   | Customer    | product   | Order number   | Status
example claim..  lorem ipsum d..  John Doe        Economics      local fact..  0582B       012345678        In progress
another claim..  lorem ipsum d..  Jane Doe        Quality Depa.. local fact..  0722F       011234678        Done
last test clai.  lorem ipsum d..  Bond, James..   IT-Departmen.. local fact..  0222B       011253438        Declined

So I have two of these, they do not share the same attributes, except for title, created by and status, so I can't have claims and deviations in the same grid. The deviation grid is positioned below the claims grid, since claims will be more in focus.

Now to the complicated part, if I select an item in the claims grid, the deviations gird will be filtered, so that only children to the selected claim is shown.

After claim is selected, we can choose to open it to see additional information, this is where I display tasks for that claim.

The same goes for deviations, if we select and open one, we can see its tasks and costs.

So my problem is that I am having serious doubts about this, with two grids on the same page it feels like a lot of clutter, and I'm not sure that filtering the deviation grid after a claim is selected is the way to go, it feels too complicated.

Also, in order to see tasks and costs one has to open a second window, say a user is searching for a specific task, but can't remember what claim/deviation it was in..

Question, how can I display these four lists in an understandable way?

If none of this makes sense, I will try to elaborate

Tags: