Global relation inspector for entries, assets, and users

[alexanderloewe]

The new relation transfer workflow introduced for entry deletion is honestly one of the best recent UX improvements in Craft CMS.

Being able to:

• delete an entry
• see some/all affected relations
• transfer those relations to another entry

is incredibly useful for editorial workflows, cleanup tasks, and larger CMS migrations.

This got me thinking about a broader feature idea that could build on top of the same underlying relation infrastructure.

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The idea

It would be extremely useful to have a global “relation inspector” for elements such as:

• Entries
• Assets
• Users

that displays all incoming relations connected to that element.

Essentially:

“Where is this element currently being used?”

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Possible implementation ideas

For example, inside the field layout / entry type editor, Craft could offer something similar to the existing:

• Alt field alias handling for Assets

• Title field alias behavior

but for relations.

Potentially something like:

• “Show all incoming relations”

• “Display all connected references”

• “Open relation usage overview”

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Why this would be useful

In larger Craft projects, relations become extremely complex over time.

Having a centralized overview would help with:

• content cleanup

• migrations

• replacing outdated entries

• removing unused assets

• debugging relational structures

• editorial confidence before deleting content

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Additional context

While testing the new relation transfer feature, I also noticed that Linkfield entry relations currently do not appear to be migrated properly during transfer.

Related issue:
#18992

That observation was actually what triggered this broader idea.

Since Craft now already has a relation transfer engine/workflow, exposing more of that relational visibility to users could become incredibly powerful.

Especially for:

• Entries

• Assets

• Users

and potentially even Matrix blocks or nested elements in the future.

Really love the direction Craft is taking here.