Tags would be great

Do tags exist? I searched the forums but couldn’t find much. It’d be great if tags could be added to sections or other doc elements. Any thoughts?

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Hi @Steven_Rudolph,

We don’t have tags in docs. Anytime you add a canvas control or formula, you do have the option to name it so you can refer to it elsewhere. I’m guessing you’re looking at tagging for linking though???

Would you mind writing a little more about what your use-case is or how you’d see tags being used?

Ben

@BenLee is right - it would be great to understand how you envision using the tags.

One of the biggest issues with tagging features, and why they eventually devolve into noise and distractions, is that they create a free-for-all; users go nuts with all manner of inconsistent tag choices.

To avoid the likely chaos that almost always ensues from open tagging, I have created a tagging design for one clients’ collection of Coda documents. The purpose of this was to create an easier way to classify documents and sections.

Here’s how it works…

Once a day, each section of the documents are automatically emailed to a secure role account in G-Suite. The emails are processed by a parser that applies a pre-defined collection of standardized tags to determine where each section “fits” into the business ontology.

Each embedded table and designated fields from all records is also mapped for tags. This makes it possible to build a very precise map of tag density regardless of where and how important terms are used in data or text.

Each section and the matching tags are added to a full-text index which is a derivative of ElasticSearch. That index is exposed as a simple web-based search engine providing instant findability across all documents. Most searches take less than 1 second even across thousands of sections.

The tags and their occurrence densities are used to score search relevance for each query. Using the the Lucerne/Elastisearch indexing architecture, I was able to create a very fast and extremely accurate ranking approach for content findability.

This approach requires no user involvement; they simply work and tagging is fully automated.

I love systems that create bottom-up knowledge from the wisdom of crowds, naturally generating emerging strength in data while pushing the work load to the edge. However, When it comes to tags, there are cases where they may create disadvantages at a higher cost to users.

I’d love to learn more about your use case.

Thanks for your reply, Ben. To elaborate: I am writing articles in a doc that appear with each article as one section. Later, I intend on importing them into a blog or CRM, and would like to have tags for each article (e.g., Case Study, Stress, United States).

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Hi Bill,
Respect. That’s an F-16 for a tagging solution. As I mentioned, mine was simply for documents that I would use (myself) for categorizing for a blog/book later.
I appreciate your bottom up approach and understand completely your take on tagging chaos.
Best,
Steven

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I don’t know if it could help, but for one of my doc where I needed tags, I simply created a “Tags table” in a “References Section” linked to the table where I needed them by using a lookup field :slight_smile: .

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Understood. So, if you had tags, you would be able to search for them and see where they exist. You know, this is already possible - just embed them into your sections.

Smart!