Is it possible to only view Publications and their parent/ child publications?

Question

I see in a a lot of Tridion implementations where there might be 100 or more publications, some of which may only inherit some default schemas. Consequently, I have to scroll through 40+ publications to find the few that relate to my task at hand. Is it possible to set this pane to a "publication family mode:"

By "Publication Family Mode", I mean that, in the Publications page I see only:

1. parent, grandparent publications of the publication that I'm in
2. child publications of the publication that I'm in
3. sibling publications of the publication that I'm in (other publications with the same parent)

Is there a way to adjust this pane, or possibly even create a Filter for it as a GUI extension?

Answer 1

Not a solution to your problem, but OOTB it's possible to add new 'Publication types' directly in the Tridion.ContentManager.Config file as part of the CM machine, a snippet is shown below:

<publicationTypes>
  <!-- 
  Constraints: 
      1) id and name attribute is unique. 
      2) id > 1024. Numbers below 1024 are reserved.
      3) titleResource is optional. if titleResource is not provided then the value specified in name will be used as PublicationType.Title
  -->
  <add id="1" name="Content" titleResource="lblContentPublicationType"/>
  <add id="2" name="Web" titleResource="lblWebPublicationType"/>
  <add id="4" name="Mobile" titleResource="lblMobilePublicationType"/>
  <add id="3" name="Email" titleResource="lblOutboundEmailPublicationType"/>
</publicationTypes>

These values are then shown in the publication properties dialog box in the Publication Type drop down.

So assuming you set up 'Family A' as a publication key you'll be able to see all items tagged with this key.

Once set up you can use the standard publication filtering (the little funnel like icon) found in the publication tree window.

You can only add one publication type to a publication, so if the publication is shared across families, this might not be suitable and then you are looking for a GUI extension.