If you’re familiar with tags in photo-sharing sites like Flickr or notes applications like Evernote, then you already understand how to use them in Rock. Tags offer a way to categorize people, content channels or any other entity type. You can literally tag anything. For the purposes of this manual, we'll be talking about tags as they relate to the Person entity. Maybe you want to label a person as a future volunteer for recruiting or maybe you’d like to tag active military personnel. While you could create a group, that approach might be a little too cumbersome if you simply want to use it as a label for a person, so you might consider a tag instead. This helps keep your list of groups to a minimum, making them easier to manage.

Tags are added to a person in the bio section of the Person Profile page. You can add a tag to a person by clicking the ti ti-plus icon in the bottom-left portion of the badge block and typing in the name of a tag directly onto the page. To save the tag link, simply press enter (i.e., there is no “Save” button). If a tag already exists, it will be displayed in the auto-complete area. If you type a new tag, it will confirm that you wish to create a new tag before adding it.

Your Tags vs. Our Tags

There are two types of tags in Rock, personal tags and organizational tags. Personal tags are only seen by the creator, while organizational tags are viewable by everyone in your organization. When you create new tags, they are created as personal tags by default, so they can only be seen by you (and your system administrator). Your administrator can promote personal tags to organizational tags upon request. When they are promoted, they keep all the people tagged, so it’s a good idea to get started with a personal tag.

Viewing Tags

To view all the individuals in a specific tag, go to People > Tags.

The Tag List page displays all your tags with the option at the top to switch between personal and organizational tags. Clicking on a specific tag will display all the individuals in the selected tag. You can also manage the individuals within a specific tag by adding or removing them from the list here (as opposed to using the person profile for each person individually). If you want to filter tags even further, you can select a type from the Type dropdown menu near the top-right of the block.

Administrating Tags

Tags can be managed by an administrator under Admin Tools > Settings > General > Tags. The two most common reasons to administrate tags are to delete tags that no longer serve a purpose and to promote personal tags to organizational tags.

Administrators, or those with tagging rights, can also secure tags, limiting who can view them. Add security by clicking on the ti ti-lock button in the tag's detail screen. This applies only to organizational tags, since personal tags are already limited to the tag creator and administrators by default. For more information about security settings, see the Securing Rock chapter of the Rock Admin Hero Guide.