Brief summary of this article:
Product Owners and Project Managers deal with many functional requirements and smaller work items. Quite often they need a way to keep them categorized. It helps to find items for specific categories quickly, track metrics and build reports per category. Targetprocess provides two ways to categorize information: with the help of Tags and Custom Fields. In this article, we describe how to assign Tags to entities and how to work with them.
Tags are small pieces of text or icons. It is possible to specify tags for almost all entities in the system. See tags assigned to an entity on its detailed view in the Description tab.
Tags are the recommended way to categorize information in a free form. There are no any strict limits for them. List of allowed tags in the system is open and users introduce new tags whenever needed just at the time when they assign some not known yet tag to an entity. Any entity may have unlimited number of assigned tags.
To introduce more rigid categories with fixed list of options use Custom Fields of type Drop Down List or Multiple Selection List instead of Tags.
As a Product Owner or Project Manager you may have the following typical tasks:
- Specify tags when adding new items
- Review tags assigned to backlog items
- Categorize entities: see them distributed by tags, change category for multiple entities
- Quickly find all entities with specified tags
- Build reports for entities based on specified tags
Specify tags when adding new items
To specify tags when a new entity is added press green Add & Open button on the Quick Add form. The popup with details of newly added item appears. In the Description tab, on its top, there are Add tag and Tags Cloud controls. Both can be used to assign tags for an entity, just in different manner.
Add tag
Add tag control has input box where you type a tag. Autocompletion form suggests you to select one of the 7 recently added tags.
Besides text ones, Emoji tags (small icons) are also supported. Smile icon suggests you to assign one of the supported Emoji tags. Find an appropriate icon in the picker or type its emoji tag in the text lookup to narrow your search quickly.
Tags Cloud
Click on the Tags Cloud to see the most used tags. Start typing in the text lookup to narrow your search quickly. Click on a tag to assign it to an opened item.
Review tags assigned to backlog items
Customize Cards on your view to show Tags assigned to work items.
Tags are supported as card units on Board and Roadmap views.
Tags can be displayed as column on List views.
In List views tags are editable. Click on tags to add or remove them.
Categorize entities
See entities distributed by tags
To view entities distributed by assigned Tags, create a new Board view with Tags selected as rows.
The List view mode is supported as well:
A number of Filters can be applied to Tags as Lanes. Say, you can exclude first 'No Tags' row with a help of the following lane filter:
?it is not None
Type a text pattern into the filter box to filter out only the Tags that contain that text in the names:
Examples of Advanced Filters that can help you to work with Tags as lanes can be found here: Filters for Tags
Change category for multiple entities
Change category with context menu
On a Board view, select multiple cards (entities) and use the Change Tags action to add a Tag to all these entities.
- Select several cards on a Board view by dragging a rectangle over them with your mouse, or by clicking them one by one with the Ctrl / Cmd key pressed
- Right click on the selected cards and select the Change Tags action in the dropdown menu
- A window showing the already assigned Tags common to all the selected entities will appear
- Input the Tag you'd like to assign to all the selected cards and press the Add button
- Success! Previously assigned tags are preserved and the new Tag is added to all selected entities
Change category as batch action
On a Board view, select multiple cards (entities) and press Edit Selected Items button. Edit assigned tags in the batch edit panel.
More information: Batch Actions
Change category with drag-n-drop
Drag-n-drop action is supported. In Board view you can select as many cards as you want and move them across lanes to change assigned category. In List views you can move entities between categories one by one.
If you drag and drop the cards to the lane (row or column) representing a Tag, then Tags previously assigned to the cards are reset and replaced with the newly selected Tag.
More information: Drag-n-drop Cards in Batches
Change category with Import from CSV files
Import from CSV files is an advanced tool to assign categories to multiple work items alltogether. Tags column is supported for mapping by Import wizard.
More information: How to Import Entities with Assigned Tags
Quickly find all entities with specified tags
You may search by tags using special search pattern. Just type the filter and Targetprocess will show all entities with specified tag. Powerful Advanced Filters for Views and Visual Reports help to select, hide or highlight data by assigned Tags.
More information: Filters for Assigned Tags
Build reports for entities based on specified tags
It is possible to build advanced Visual Reports that display entities distributed per assigned category. We can calculate and display count of entities per assigned Tag in the system.
Besides count of records, many other data fields such as effort, time spent, cycle time, bugs count (for user stories) can be used for aggregation on vertical axis.
More information: Visual Reports based on Tags
Administration Tasks and Settings
Administrators of Targetprocess account can manage Tags in the system settings. You can apply the following actions to tags in the system: Add new Tags, Rename Tags, Merge Tags, Delete Tags.
More information: Manage Tags in System Settings
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