Public tags


Badge

Public Tags enable you to group topics together in order to organise content in a way that’s transparent to all members of your community. They differ from Moderator Tags as they can be seen by any member of your community. You can choose whether end users are allowed to add tags.

 

How To Add, Remove, Rename, And Merge Public Tags


You can manage your public tags via ControlSettingsPublic Tags. From here, you’ll see options to add new tags, remove tags, edit (rename) tags, and merge two public tags together. They’re mostly pretty self-explanatory, but we’ve outlined some less obvious details below:

Adding new tags

  • Public tags will be shown to end users on the topic creation page even if they’re not attached to any topics yet.
  • This means that on a brand-new community, you can start with a predefined list of tags for users to pick from.

Editing (renaming) tags

  • If you edit a tag by changing its name, then the tag will be updated across all topics where it’s been used.
  • This means you can easily rename a tag used across hundreds of topics in a single second.
  • Tags on inSided preserve casing when they’re created.
  • However, if a tag has been created by an end user with some casing that you don’t like, then you can edit that tag to have different casing.​​​

Removing tags

  • This is a permanent delete of a public tag, removing all trace of the tag from topics.
  • The tag will also not longer show in the autocomplete input for end users or moderators.
  • Be careful when using this option, as it’s not possible to recover the data.

Merging tags

  • Need to tidy up some duplicates? With our merge tool, you can merge a duplicate tag into another tag by pressing merge and choosing the tag you want to merge your selected tag into.
  • This will automatically rename all the instances of the duplicate tag, and also remove the duplicate tag.
  • Again, please be careful with this tool - it’s not possible to undo the action.

Tag usage counter - updates are not realtime.

One note on ‘number of topics’ tag is used in: this data is updated a few times a week, not in real time. I.e. if you remove a tag from some topics, or add it to a lot of topics, it will not immediately reflect in the number shown here.

 

How To Prevent End Users From Creating New Public Tags

You can prevent your end users from creating new public tags when they’re making new topics, and force them to select from the list of tags you’ve got in Control.

  1. Go to ControlSettingsPublic Tags
  2. Turn off the setting Allow end users to add new public tags
  3. You’re done! You can change this setting at any time.

 

How To Add Public Tags To A Topic (as a moderator)

  1. Open any topic in Control.
  2. On the Details panel, select the ‘Public Tags’ input box.
  3. Add a new tag, or search for an existing tag that you want to reuse and select it. You can add as many tags as you’d like!

 

End user experience of public tags

Here’s a quick rundown of how end users can interact with public tags.

When an end user is creating a topic, once they enter a title then we run a search for other similar topics. If those similar topics have public tags, then these tags are automatically suggested to the end user below the tag input.

An example of automatically suggested tags on inSpired, with the topic title ‘Ideation’.

When an end user clicks on the tag field, then they’ll see a list of the most-used tags on the community.

Top tags are shown directly to the end user when clicking on the input field.

End users can search through all tags on the platform, including those not yet attached to any topics. 

Public tags are public to all members
Both community members and moderators can add them to topics (if you’ve allowed them to), and they’re always exposed to your community members.


21 replies

Badge

Is there an option to do a bulk delete in control vs deleting individual tags in control? I have 173 pages of tags and most of them I want to delete, but it will take a while individually.

Badge

Not at the moment @aluciani but that’s something that was indeed on our radar but didn’t make it into this release. Are you planning to delete based on usage?

Badge

Yes, based on usage, I have a ton of tags with 0 topics tagged.

Badge

Yes, based on usage, I have a ton of tags with 0 topics tagged.

 

We are planning to doing exactly the same.

Hi @daniel.boon , do you have any idea when it will be possible to delete a bulk of tags"?
We also have a lot of tags with 0 topics or tags that are misspelled that we want to bulk delete. 

We think it is very nice that we have options to group and optimize the use of tags; deleting all non relevant tags would be the first step for us. However, it is nearly impossible to delete them manually … :/ 

Thanks 

Badge

Hey @Hiewwaiy - thanks for the feedback. I don’t have any concrete timelines on this yet, although it is something we’ll consider for the next iteration!

Badge

If those similar topics have public tags, then these tags are automatically suggested to the end user below the tag input.

Hi @daniel.boon! I’ve noticed that many suggested tags are not appropriate for the post. For example, “help,” “Coursera community event,” and “certificate” are a few of the tags being surfaced to people but then we have to manually remove them because they don’t match the content of the post.

I’d love it if we could turn off the ‘automatically suggest’ tags function!

Badge

If those similar topics have public tags, then these tags are automatically suggested to the end user below the tag input.

Hi @daniel.boon! I’ve noticed that many suggested tags are not appropriate for the post. For example, “help,” “Coursera community event,” and “certificate” are a few of the tags being surfaced to people but then we have to manually remove them because they don’t match the content of the post.

I’d love it if we could turn off the ‘automatically suggest’ tags function!

Hey @LPortalupi - thanks for adding your feedback here! Just to make sure I understand - would you prefer to ‘hide’ these tags from the automatic suggestions, or do you want to remove automatic suggestions altogether?

Badge

@daniel.boon I’d prefer to remove automatic suggestions altogether. These are just 3 examples; there are many, many more tags that are suggested but aren’t relevant. 

Badge

When I merge multiple public tags into one, the capitalisation I write is ignored (e.g. I write “iPhone” but “iphone” will be saved). Only when I edit a single public tag, the capitalisation will be saved correctly.

Badge

Any update when ‘bulk tag delete’ will be available?

I hope its on the radar, I am getting tired of deleting individual tags.

Badge

Any update when ‘bulk tag delete’ will be available?

I hope its on the radar, I am getting tired of deleting individual tags.

Same here. I’ve even come up with a workaround to make it a little easier:

  1. Select all public tags that I want to delete on the current page I’m looking at
  2. Click on “Merge tags” in the top right
  3. Give it a name I will recognize again (like “deleteme”) and save changes
  4. Find the public tag “deleteme” and delete it
  5. Repeat

Another small thing: The wording isn’t consistent (“Remove” vs. “Delete”):

 

Badge

Thanks for sharing the workaround @bjoern_schulze I tried it and works good.

Badge

When I merge multiple public tags into one, the capitalisation I write is ignored (e.g. I write “iPhone” but “iphone” will be saved). Only when I edit a single public tag, the capitalisation will be saved correctly.

Thanks for sharing this @bjoern_schulze  - seems like a bug to me - I’ll raise one on your behalf!

Also, clever workaround on bulk deleting! Whilst I’m glad there’s ‘a way to Rome’, I imagine other customers might not end up reading this topic to find out about the workaround, so I’ve noted the feedback for the future - however, this is not currently planned any time soon.

Can I add public tags to the ideas that come through from customers ?

Badge

@daniel.boon @Cristina @Marion Frecaut 

I’ve been doing a bit of a clean-up for our public tags. I’ve for example merged the public tags Elisa Viihde and viihde on Monday (it’s Wednesday morning atm. In control I only see the tag Elisa Viihde, but in the “Popular tags” widget and in the community search I still see both. 

When could I expect the tags to have been updated throughout the community?

 

Badge

There’s often heavy caching in place on the platform to improve performance. However, I’d expect those tags to refresh within 24 hours or so.

If they don’t, try forcing the cache to purge via the troubleshooting tools.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Both community members and moderators can add them to topics (if you’ve allowed them to)

 

How do I give access to a specific custom role, and allow them to add public tags to other user’s posts?

Badge

Hey @Daniele Cmty !

As far as I know, that requires Mod+ permissions and has to be done in Control. You can’t do it out on the front-end.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

has to be done in Control

 

Thank you @Blastoise186!

So If I understood correctly: if you have Mod+ Permissions, adding more public tags can be done only in the Control environment, but not in the front-end. Only CMs and Admins can do that in the frontend.

Gotcha!

Hi - I have turned off public tags (and have deleted them all - this is not a feature we want to use). 

I had been hoping this would mean “tags” section in create a topic would disappear. Is this possible to remove?

 

 

Reply