Related Records (Child Tabs)

Link a second tab's rows into a parent tab so customers can explore related data without leaving the card.

3 min read

A child tab is a tab that doesn’t appear in the portal’s main navigation. Instead, its rows are displayed within a parent tab — either inside a Catalog card’s lightbox or within a Table row, depending on the parent tab type.

A typical example: a product catalog where each product card expands to show the customer’s order history for that specific product.

How It Works

A child tab is linked to its parent by a join column — a column that exists in both sheets and contains a shared value. For example:

  • Parent sheet: Products, with a Product ID column
  • Child sheet: Orders, with a Product ID column

When a customer opens a product card, eg2 finds all rows in the Orders sheet where Product ID matches the product’s Product ID and shows them as a Related Records section.

Unlike regular tabs, child tab rows are not filtered by the customer’s contact — they’re filtered by the join column value. This lets you show data that belongs to an item (like a product), rather than data that belongs to the logged-in person.

Setting Up a Child Tab

1. Prepare your data

Make sure both your parent sheet and your child sheet have a column with matching values. The values must be identical in both sheets for the link to work.

2. Add the child tab in eg2

  1. In the portal editor, click Add Tab and select the sheet that will be the child.
  2. Configure its columns — visible fields, display labels, and direction — as you would for any tab.
  3. In the Tab Options, enable Child Only. This hides the tab from the portal’s main navigation so customers don’t see it as a standalone tab.
  4. Set the Join Column — the column in the child sheet that links it to the parent.
  5. Click Save.
  1. Open the parent tab in the portal editor.
  2. In the Linked Child Tab setting, select the child tab you just created.
  3. Set the Parent Join Column — the column in the parent sheet that contains the matching value.
  4. Click Save.

What Customers See

When a customer opens a card or row in the parent tab:

  • The item’s details, images, and info panel are shown as usual.
  • A Related Records section appears, listing the rows from the child sheet that match the join column value for that item.

The related records use the column display names and visibility settings you configured for the child tab.

Notes

  • Child tabs can be linked to Catalog or Table parent tabs.
  • A portal can have multiple child tabs, each linked to a different parent.
  • Child tab rows come from the same spreadsheet connection — no separate data source is needed.
  • Child Only and Contact-Free are mutually exclusive (see Contact-Free Tabs).
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