# Featured relations should be managed through types, not templates **URL:** \ **Category:** Implemented\ **Tags:** Templates, Types, Properties\ **Created:** [March 18, 2023, 12:15pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584 "2023-03-18T12:15:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Filip](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/filip/32/22248_2.png) [@Filip](https://community.anytype.io/u/Filip)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2023, 12:15pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/1 "2023-03-18T12:15:00Z")
#### WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND Currently featured relations are per template, not types. So when you turn an block into an object, or convert an object into a different types, featured relations don’t get applied. I would like to be able to manage featured relations per type too. #### HOW COULD IT BE DONE Ideally you would be able to set featured relations per type from the library. You should still be able to overwrite these preferences with a template or in individual objects. #### REAL WORLD USE CASES Being able to set featured relations per type would make it a lot easier to manage. If you wanted to change all featured relations of a type, you could just do it from the library for instance instead of needing to do it for every object individually every time you wanted to change something. #### RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES You can use templates currently, but they don’t get auto-applied a lot of the times and you would still need to manually change featured relations for every object every time you wanted to change something. #### ADDITIONAL CONTEXT / ---
**Author:** ![larrylai](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/larrylai/32/6734_2.png) [@larrylai](https://community.anytype.io/u/larrylai)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2023, 4:40am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/2 "2023-03-19T04:40:25Z")
I think “types” and “template” can have the featured relation in the same time. And the priority of “templates” should be higher than that of “types”. ---
**Author:** ![Filip](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/filip/32/22248_2.png) [@Filip](https://community.anytype.io/u/Filip)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2023, 8:31am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/3 "2023-03-19T08:31:02Z")
Currently types they can’t, but it would be nice if they could. ---
**Author:** ![Angelo](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/angelo/32/9996_2.png) [@Angelo](https://community.anytype.io/u/Angelo)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2023, 6:29pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/4 "2023-03-20T18:29:52Z")
I understand the thought but this (IMO) would obscure the distinction between Types and Templates. Types are essentially Pages with unique Names, Icons, Layout…and are otherwise non-descript. I think Templates should have the most elasticity, so they can be applied to any of your Types. What if you had different Relational needs, for one Type, depending on the circumstances? You do that, by having multiple Templates available when you create your Type. If the Type had pre-determined Relations every time, you’d lose that flexibility. Besides, this is already doable. Once you have a custom Type, you can create another exactly like it in the Set view. ---
**Author:** ![Filip](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/filip/32/22248_2.png) [@Filip](https://community.anytype.io/u/Filip)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2023, 7:27am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/5 "2023-03-21T07:27:49Z")
> [@Angelo](#): > > What if you had different Relational needs, for one Type, depending on the circumstances? You do that, by having multiple Templates available when you create your Type. If the Type had pre-determined Relations every time, you’d lose that flexibility. That it easily solvable by making templates overwrite everything including featured relations. So you could for instance make due dates and priorities featured by default, but then create templates which would overwrite this to do whatever you want. > [@Angelo](#): > > Besides, this is already doable. Once you have a custom Type, you can create another exactly like it in the Set view. Hmm, I’m not really sure I understanding what you’re saying here. Anyways, I too feel like it should probably be up to templates to manage this. A nice compromise would be to be able to set a default template which would be applied every time you create an object unless you choose another template. This only works now in some places and also doesn’t work if you have multiple templates. The problem I would still be left is the problem of essentially needing to change individually all of my objects that used the same template previously if I decided I wanted to change one small thing like adding or removing a featured relation, but maybe something like synced templates could be a better way to solve this. ---
**Author:** ![seanfy](https://community.anytype.io/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/d2c977/32.png) [@seanfy](https://community.anytype.io/u/seanfy)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 11:25am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/6 "2023-04-07T11:25:45Z")
I’m really with @Filip on this one. The main problem I see is there are too many places that I could add a new relation to an object, and they just mixed together into the final object I created. So when I look at a relation in the relation panel of an object later on, it’s hard to tell from where a relation is added, some relation added from Set view without value are even not displayed here. This makes it difficult to find out where should I go if I want to modify a relation, I have to remember (or try hard to find) if a particular relation was added to this object only, or was added from Set, or was from its original type, or was from template T, so I can go and change it there. It’s OK if these relations will never change once they are set but it’s quite unlikely the case in reality. (Just my thoughts from a short-term user so far, others or the dev team may have a more clear vision of this 😛 ) ---
**Author:** ![Filip](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/filip/32/22248_2.png) [@Filip](https://community.anytype.io/u/Filip)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 3:32pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/7 "2023-04-07T15:32:44Z")
One way to fix some of your concerns is to, for instance, leave relations in the type group in the relation panel if that’s’ where the relations are coming from. Same for sets. Currently they are moved up after you add them to the object. ---
**Author:** ![C.c](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/c.c/32/10820_2.png) [@C.c](https://community.anytype.io/u/C.c)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2023, 9:53pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/8 "2023-04-07T21:53:21Z")
I like it the current way… I could decide if I want relation to stick with type or template. Regardless what one prefers, [sub type feature](https://community.anytype.io/t/sub-types/2271) will eliminate this issue and continue providing elasticity, whichever hierarchy user develop for their own organisation. ---
**Author:** ![Filip](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/filip/32/22248_2.png) [@Filip](https://community.anytype.io/u/Filip)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2024, 8:48am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/9 "2024-06-15T08:48:06Z")
Related to: > [@Synced Templates (like Tana) / Type relations to show up in editor (like Notion properties)](https://community.anytype.io/t/synced-templates-tana-templates/22076): > > Tana has by far the best system I encountered so far when it comes to templates like these and hopefully we can get something similar in AT. [image] All of this appears bellow each supertag (AT type) meaning that, for instance, if you want to add or remove a relation from all of your supertags, all you need to do is to open the supertag and change one line in this template. Extremely useful. ---
**Author:** ![mariusgerome](https://community.anytype.io/user_avatar/community.anytype.io/mariusgerome/32/26140_2.png) [@mariusgerome](https://community.anytype.io/u/mariusgerome)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2024, 9:37am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/10 "2024-08-22T09:37:06Z")
#### WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND? Lets say, I’m in the Type view for “YouTube Video” and I want to achieve one cohesive feel and look of any Object with that Type. Sure, I could have created all of these Objects with one Template – but now its too late! I’m aware that I can’t really change the markdown afterwards, BUT what about the ‘Featured Relations’ ? Now: every Object with that Type has only Featured; “Backlinks, Object type, Tag” but what if I want other Relations to be visible too? Right now I literally need to go in to every object and change that by hand… #### HOW COULD IT BE DONE? There could be an option to set ‘Featured Relations’ for any Objects in a given Type. And also the option to overwrite all current objects with a new ‘Featured Relations’ structure. When I mark multiple Objects in a Type-View, I can right-click and choose “edit Relations” … thats the perfect place to put an option for this feature. To overwrite all Featured Relations and their order. (and I’ve noticed a bug, I’ll create a new Topic: [LINK](https://community.anytype.io/t/type-multiple-objects-selected-edit-relations-bug/23540)) ---
**Author:** ![java](https://community.anytype.io/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@java](https://community.anytype.io/u/java)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2024, 9:46pm UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/11 "2024-09-09T21:46:44Z")
#### WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND? Define featured relations for each Type in the library #### HOW COULD IT BE DONE? Add `star` icon to the right of each relation when editing Type in the Library. This marks the given relation featured in all objects of the given type. #### REAL WORLD USE CASES This is a very basic use case. Notion supports this forever since it supports databases. There is another thread about changing template after object creation, but if you allow specifying featured relations per type — this will solve 80% of the use case. > [@Apply Template to an Existing Object](https://community.anytype.io/t/apply-template-to-an-existing-object/2096/123): > > It seems to me that there is a confusion in this thread of two concepts: Layout and Template. When people give examples of how properties work in Tana/Capacities/Notion, they really imply layout, not template. I am an advanced user of Notion and currently actively migrating my workflows to AnyType. I am not a user of Tana/Capacities, but the examples above really talk about layout. At first glance I like that you allow to include relationship in the contents of the object, although I am not sur… ---
**Author:** ![naught101](https://community.anytype.io/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@naught101](https://community.anytype.io/u/naught101)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2025, 2:34am UTC](https://community.anytype.io/t/featured-relations-should-be-managed-through-types-not-templates/8584/12 "2025-02-06T02:34:01Z")
I think this might be a duplicate of [Apply Template to an Existing Object](https://community.anytype.io/t/apply-template-to-an-existing-object/2096)