In this guide, I will look at what relationships are and how you can use relationships in Notion databases.
What is a relationship in Notion databases?
A relationship defines how data in one database relates to data in either a different database or within the same database.
One of the reasons why Notion is such a powerful productivity system is you can define what data is related to what.
How to create a relationship between Notion databases
You can create a relationship between Notion databases from either view, but I would recommend that you decide which database you want to be able to see the linked data.
The example I will use in this guide is a database designed for task management and another database to track my projects. I want to see which project a task relates to, if any. I will add the relationship to my task database.
When making database changes, I recommend using the table view as you can see the new columns (fields) you are creating or updating on the Notion database.
Five steps to adding a Relationship column to a Notion database
- From the table, view click the add icon to the right of the last column
- From the property type, select the relationship
- Select the database you want to create a relationship with
- Make changes related to the limit and show on names of other database attributes (I will discuss them in the next section)
- Click create relationship
Notion relationship attributes
The Notion relationship attributes can be updated once they have been created, but you should try to get it right before you start adding pages to the Notion database.
The Limit attribute
The limit attribute defines the type of relationship you want with the other Notion database. The default setting is no limit allowing you to have one item on the database. You created the relationship on too many pages on the source database.
As an alternative, you can define a one-to-one relationship where an item on the database you created the relationship on can only have a relationship with one page on the source database.
Show relationship on the other database
With Notion, you can show the relationship on the other database, which defaults to off, but you can turn it on to display details on the pages stored on the other database that the page is related to.
Why would you want to create a relationship between Notion databases?
Relationships allow you to refer to related data within the Notion database view. I’m going to use my productivity system as an example.
In my productivity space, I have several databases, one to manage my goals, one to store any ideas I get, another for my projects, a task list and a database to manage my content schedule.
All of these databases have relationships with at least one other database. This allows me to create a system to create a project(s) from my goals or ideas database. I can see the projects I create from within the goal or idea page. This functionality is beyond this guide, but I’ll be adding a link to the guide when I add it within the next couple of weeks.
Conclusion
Today we have looked at how you can create relationships between two different Notion databases. You can also create relationships within the same Notion database, which is covered in our guide to Notion internal database relationships.
Last updated 29/10/2022 to update links