Mapping to Another Entity | Yext Hitchhikers Platform
What You’ll Learn
In this section, you will learn:
- How it works
- Use Cases
- Considerations
- Linked Entities
Overview
There are two ways to add content from another entity onto your page. You can display content from a specific field on a specific entity across all of your pages, or you can display a list of associated entities. Displaying a list of associated entities is the more dynamic option, as this displays content for the entities that are associated with the entity of the page, which can vary entity to entity.
Mapping to Another Entity Field
To map to another entity field, you select both the specific entity, and the field from that entity that you would like to display on all of your pages.
Because you are selecting a specific field on a specific entity, content from that one field will display across all of your pages. Meaning, if you are creating location pages and you map to an event or an FAQ entity, it will display content for the one specific FAQ or Event that you select across all of the pages using that template.
Use cases:
- Highlight a single event on all location pages
- Add an FAQ to your pages
- Display an image of a flagship location on all pages
To dynamically display content based on which events or FAQs are associated with a location, you should leverage the linked entity relationship capability (see below).
Linked Entities
Another way to display content about another entity is by linking entities in the Knowledge Graph. Through the list modules in the Page Builder, you can display content from the entities that are linked to an entity in the Knowledge Graph.
This is the best way to dynamically display content from other entities, as it pulls from the list of associated entities which will vary per entity.
For example, if one location has 3 associated entities, and one location has 2 associated entities, the pages for those locations will display 3 or 2 entities on the page accordingly.
Use cases:
- Display a list of services offered at a specific venue
- A list of frequently asked questions
- Add a list of doctors to a facility page to showcase practitioners who work at that location
Adding Content from Linked Entities to Pages
To do this, you will need to create an Entity Relationship custom field and add it to the entity. Once you create this field, you can add a list module to your Pages and display information from the linked entities on the page.
For example, let’s say you are creating pages for each of your hotels, and you want to showcase the services that are offered at each hotel:
First, you will need to create a custom entity for the hotel services so you can add an entity for each service offered. Then, you need to create an entity relationship custom field, and add that to the hotel entity. Then add the associated services to the list for each hotel entity. That handles the Knowledge Graph portion. Now, on your page, you want to add a list module and choose to pull content from the list field you created. Below is a full list of the steps to do this:
In the Knowledge Graph:
- Create a Custom Entity type for the entities you would like to surface in this list.
- In this instance, we would create a Custom Entity Type called ‘Service Offering’ and add entities for various hotel amenities such as: Wellness Center, Business Center, Spa & Sauna, etc.
- Create an Entity Relationship custom field, and make it available on the Hotel entity.
- For Field Specific you want to make sure it is an Entity Relationship field type. For the VALIDATION you want to select the entity type you would like to be included in this list. For this example, we will select ‘Service Offering’ as the validation option because we are associating the services with the hotels.
- Click into the desired entities and update the custom field to add the corresponding linked entities.
- In this instance, we would add the corresponding Service Offerings to the entity relationship field for each Hotel.
That covers the Knowledge Graph set up. Now we have to configure the module in the Page Builder.
In Page Builder:
- Add a List module.
- For the List Source, choose a list from this entity.
- This is because the Entity relationship field you created lives on the entity type that this template is for.
- Click Choose a field and select the name of the entity relationship custom field you created.
- Click Next and you will see that the module has been updated.
- Now you need to map the module fields on the custom entity.
- If you have content in the entity relationship field for the previewed entity, you will see that appear in the Live Preview as you save your field mappings.
- If an entity does not have any entities associated with it, the module will not appear on that page.