Tags And Folders

Filters describe records by what is in them. Tags and folders let you organize records by something you decide yourself: a colored label you stick on a record, or a folder you file it into. Both are optional extras on a list screen — you will only see them if the person who set up your application put them there.

What This Is

A tag is a small colored label with a name. A record can carry as many tags as you like, and the same tag can be used across many record types. Tags are typically shared with your colleagues, but you may also be able to create private tags that only you can see.

A folder is a place. Folders form a tree, and a record is filed into exactly one folder of that tree — or into none at all. Filing a record into a folder is done by dragging its row onto the folder.

The two are deliberately different:

Neither of them is part of the record's own fields. Nothing you do with tags or folders changes the data in the record itself.

Why It Matters

Filters answer "show me everything that matches these rules". That works well when the rule can be written down — status is Open, amount over 10,000, due date this week. It works badly when the grouping lives in your head: the accounts I promised to call back, the applications we shortlisted in the meeting, last year's archived contracts.

Tags and folders cover exactly that gap:

• Use a filter when the answer can be derived from the record's own fields. Filters keep themselves up to date; a record that changes status moves in and out of the filter on its own. See Filtering Your Data.
• Use a tag when a person has to make a judgment call, when several overlapping labels can apply to the same record, or when you want a personal short list. Tags stay on the record until someone removes them.
• Use a folder when records belong to exactly one bucket and the buckets are worth browsing — years, regions, clients, closed versus current. A folder tree is a place you can walk into; a tag is a label you can stack.

Tags

Where Tags Appear

Tags show up in two places on a list screen, and both are switched on separately by your administrator:

1. On each row — the record's tags as colored chips, plus a small tag-shaped button that opens the manage-tags window.
2. Above the list — the tag strip (sometimes called the tag cloud): every tag you are allowed to use, each with a count, used as a filter.

Where the chips sit depends on the layout of the screen:

• Table and sortable table: in an extra column at the far right of the row, headed Tags.
• Simple list: on a line directly under the record's title.
• Cards: at the bottom of the card, under the fields.
• Board, calendar and files list: no chips on records at all. Only the tag strip can be placed on these screens.

Tags are not shown on the record's detail screen. If you open a record and look for its tags, you will not find them — go back to a list screen that has tagging switched on. See Record Detail Screens.

Putting Tags On A Record

The tag-shaped button next to a record's chips (tooltip "Manage tags") opens the manage-tags window. It appears only if you are allowed to edit that kind of record; if you can view records but not change them, you will see the chips and no button.

1. Click the tag button on the row. A window opens with the record's title at the top.
2. The available tags load as chips. Child tags are stacked to the right of their parent.
3. Click a chip to put that tag on the record. The chip becomes solid and gains a small x.
4. Click a selected chip again to take the tag off.
5. Close the window when you are done.

Every click is saved the moment you make it — there is no Save button and no Cancel. The Close button at the bottom only closes the window.

Above the chips, once the record has at least one tag, you get a count of how many tags are set and a red "Clear all tags" link that strips every tag off this record in one click. There is no confirmation and no undo, so use it deliberately.

Finding a tag in a long list. The search box at the top of the window filters the tag list. Type at least two characters and wait a moment — the list reloads by itself. Clearing the box brings all tags back. If nothing matches you get "No matching tags found."; if the record type has no tags available at all you get "No tags available."

While the window is working it shows "Loading tags...", and if something goes wrong, "Unable to load tags." — close it and try again.

Child tags look dimmed. If a record carries a parent tag, the tags underneath it are drawn in a muted style with a dashed outline. That is only a hint that the parent already covers them; they are still separate tags and you can click any of them to set it as well.

Example — tagging a support ticket

A ticket comes in that is both a billing question and a possible bug. You open the ticket list, click the tag button on that row, and click the chips Billing and Suspected bug. Both chips turn solid. A colleague filtering the list on Suspected bug now sees this ticket alongside the others, without you having changed the ticket's category field — which still says "Billing", because that is what the customer chose.

Private Tags

If your administrator has given you the right to do it, the manage-tags window has a small "Create private tag" section at the bottom. Expand it, type a name, pick a color with the color swatch next to the name box, and press "Add".

The new tag is created and put on the current record in one step, and the form clears so you can add another.

A private tag is yours alone:

• On list screens only you see it — in the manage-tags window, in the tag strip, and on rows.
• Colleagues looking at the same record do not see it, even if they can see all the record's other tags. Someone who administers tags for the whole application can still see that your private tags exist, on the tag administration screen.
• It is not limited to one kind of record: you can put the same private tag on an order, a contact and a task.

That makes private tags the natural home for personal working lists. A shared tag is a statement about the record that the whole team relies on; a private tag is a note to yourself.

Example — a personal follow-up list

You are working through a list of 300 leads and want to come back to a handful on Monday. You create a private tag Call Monday in orange on the first one, then add it to four more from their rows. On Monday you open the leads list, click the Call Monday chip in the tag strip, and you have your five records. Nobody else's screen changed, and no lead record was edited.

If instead you had used a shared tag, your colleague's "untouched leads" tag strip would suddenly show a Call Monday chip they know nothing about.

Managing your private tags. The right to create private tags normally also puts a Tags entry in the administration part of the navigation. Opening it gives you a "My private tags" section where you can rename a tag, change its color, or delete it. Deleting a tag removes it from every record it was on. If that entry is not in your navigation, you can still take a private tag off individual records through the manage-tags window.

Who Can Create Shared Tags

Creating tags that everyone sees is a separate permission from creating private ones, and it is usually held by a small group. In practice:

• Anyone with the tag button can put existing tags on records and take them off.
• Create Private Tags lets you make your own invisible-to-others tags from the manage-tags window.
• Manage Tags lets someone create and maintain the shared tag list — names, colors, the parent / child nesting, and which record types a tag may be used on.

If a tag your team needs does not exist, ask for it rather than working around it — see What To Ask Your Administrator For at the end of this chapter.

Filtering By Tag: The Tag Strip

When your screen has the tag strip, it appears as a row of chips, usually just above the rows. Each chip shows a tag name and a number. At the right-hand end of the strip is a small button with slider icons, tooltip "Tag filter settings".

Picking tags. Click a chip to filter the list down to records carrying that tag. Click it again to remove it from the selection. You can pick several. Selected chips are drawn solid, carry a small x, and move to the front of the strip, taking their parent chip with them; the rest stay in alphabetical order, with child tags slightly indented under their parents.

What the numbers mean. The number on a chip is how many records carry that tag across everything the list currently matches — after your filters and after the folder you are in, but before your tag selection, and counting every matching record rather than only the page in front of you. So the counts do not shrink as you click chips, and a chip showing 0 means nothing in the current list has that tag. The count always includes records tagged with tags below this one, even when you are matching exact tags only, so it can be larger than the number of rows you end up with.

The settings button opens a small panel with three things:

• A search box that hides the chips not matching what you type. It is a way to find a chip in a long strip — it does not filter the list. Esc clears it.
• Matching mode: Any / All.
• Hierarchy, a single row you click to switch between "Children included" and "Exact tags only". The text tells you which one is active right now. Children are included unless you turn that off.

Any versus All. With Any, a record is shown if it carries at least one of the tags you picked. With All, it must carry every one of them.

Children included versus exact tags only. Tags can be nested. With Children included — the starting setting — picking a tag also brings in records tagged with anything underneath it. With Exact tags only, only the tag you clicked counts.

The relationship runs downward only. Picking a parent tag pulls in its children; picking a child never pulls in records that only carry the parent.

Example — narrowing a project list with tags

Your projects are tagged from a shared tag list that nests like this:

• Region → North, South
• Risk → Watch, Escalated

You click Region with the starting settings (Any, children included). The list now shows every project tagged North or South, or tagged Region itself — 84 rows.

You add Escalated to the selection. Still on Any, that widens the list: 84 regional projects plus every escalated project, wherever it is — 97 rows.

You switch Matching mode to All. Now a project must be in a region and escalated — 11 rows. That is the list you wanted for the status meeting.

Finally you switch Hierarchy to Exact tags only and the list drops to 2 rows: only projects carrying the umbrella tag Region itself — not North or South — and Escalated now qualify. That is almost never what you want, so you switch it back.

Clicking a tag chip on a row does the same thing. The chips next to a record are not links to the record — clicking one applies that tag as a filter on the list, exactly as if you had clicked it in the strip, and clicking the same tag again removes it. This is worth knowing on screens that show row chips but no strip, because then the row chip is your only handle: if the list suddenly got shorter after a stray click, click that same chip once more.

Tags and the rest of the filter bar. Your tag selection is not a filter chip. The "Remove filters" button on an empty list clears the filter chips and leaves your tags alone, and there is no "clear all tags" button on the strip — deselect them by clicking each selected chip again. Your tag selection does travel in the page address, so a link you copy to a colleague reproduces it, and it is stored along with everything else when you save a view. See Saved Views And Queries.

Tags: Things Worth Knowing

• Changing tags does not re-filter the list. If you are filtered on a tag and you take that tag off a record from the manage-tags window, the row stays on screen with its chips updated. Use the refresh button on the filter bar to re-run the list.
• A tag may be restricted to certain record types. The manage-tags window and the strip only ever offer the tags that are allowed on the kind of record you are looking at. A tag with no restriction — which is what a private tag you create from the window gets — is offered everywhere. If a tag you expect is missing on one screen but present on another, that is why.
• Deleting a record loses its tags for good. Even where deleted records can be restored, the tag assignments are not restored with them. See Deleting Records And The Trash.
• On a public page — a screen your application publishes without sign-in — the chips are still there and still filter the list, but the tag button is not, so tags cannot be changed. Private tags never appear on such a page.
• The strip hides itself when there is nothing to show. If no tag is available for that record type, the strip does not render at all, even though your administrator placed it.

Folders

Where Folders Appear

When a screen uses folders, a bordered panel appears above the list — in the usual arrangement near the top of the screen, above the filter bar, though your administrator can place it elsewhere. It contains:

• A breadcrumb at the top left, starting with a house icon (the top level) and then one entry per folder you have opened. At the top level the breadcrumb reads "Root".
• Two buttons at the top right: "Tree" (a small diagram icon) and "New folder" (a folder with a plus). On a narrow window the text disappears and only the icons remain.
• A "Parent level" row, shown when you are inside a folder, with the name of the folder above.
• One row per folder at the current level, each with a yellow folder icon and a pencil button on the right. If the current level has none, the panel says "No folders here."

Folders can be placed on the table, sortable table, simple list, cards and file-list layouts. They cannot be placed on a board or a calendar.

The folder tree belongs to the screen, not to you — every colleague looking at that screen sees the same folders in the same places.

Not the same as the file repository. If your application has a file repository screen, that screen has its own folders for files. Those are a different set of folders and have nothing to do with the ones described here.

Moving Around The Tree

• Click a folder row to open it. The list below reloads and the breadcrumb grows.
• Click an entry in the breadcrumb to jump back to that level; the house icon takes you to the top.
• Click the "Parent level" row to go up one step.
• Click "Tree" for a pop-up window showing the whole tree at once, with each folder's count beside it. Clicking any folder there jumps straight to it — this is the fast way into a folder buried three levels down. If nothing has been created yet it says "No folders created yet."

Opening a folder always takes you back to page 1 of the list.

About the counts in the tree window. The number beside a folder is how many records of this screen's kind are filed directly in that folder. Records in its sub-folders are not counted, and the number ignores whatever filters you have on the list. It can therefore be larger than the number of rows you see when you open the folder.

What The List Shows In A Folder

This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly:

• At the top level, the list shows only records that are not in any folder. As soon as a record is filed, it disappears from the top level and lives only inside its folder.
• Inside a folder, the list shows only the records filed in that folder — not the records in its sub-folders.

Everything else still applies on top: your filters, your tag selection, your sorting and your page size all work within the folder you are in.

Example — where did the invoice go?

Your invoice list has folders per year: 2024, 2025, 2026. You are at the top level and see 12 invoices — the ones nobody has filed yet. Last week's invoice is not among them, because a colleague dragged it into 2026.

To find it without knowing the folder, click Tree, look at the counts, and open the likely folder. The search box and filters on the list will not help you here: they work inside the folder you are currently in, and at the top level filed records are not listed at all. On screens organized by folder, browsing the tree is the intended route.

Creating, Renaming And Deleting Folders

Creating. Click "New folder". Fill in the folder name (required) and, if you want, a description, then press the create button. The new folder is created inside the folder you are currently in, so navigate to the right place first. A message strip confirms "Folder created."

Renaming and moving. Click the pencil button on a folder row. The window that opens lets you change the name, change the description, and pick a different Parent — the list of parents includes "Root" for moving the folder to the top level. Press the save button; a message strip confirms "Folder updated."

Deleting. The same window has a red Delete button at the bottom, with the note "Only if the folder does not contain assigned records." next to it. Your browser asks "Delete this folder?"; confirm and the folder is gone, with a "Folder deleted." message.

A folder refuses to be deleted while it still holds anything. You will get a message strip saying the folder contains child folders, or that it contains assigned records. Empty it first: move the sub-folders elsewhere, and drag the records out (see below) or into another folder.

Some folders are pinned by your administrator. Renaming, moving or deleting one produces a message saying the folder is pinned and cannot be modified. That is deliberate — ask if you think it is wrong.

Filing Records By Dragging

Dragging is how a record gets into a folder. There is no menu entry for it.

1. Point at the row (or card) you want to file.
2. Press the mouse button and drag it over the folder panel. Valid drop targets highlight as you pass over them.
3. Release the button.

You can drop a record on:

• a folder row in the panel — files it there;
• a breadcrumb entry — files it into that ancestor folder;
• the "Parent level" row — files it one level up;
• the house icon in the breadcrumb — takes it out of folders altogether, so it shows at the top level again.

The move is saved as soon as you let go. There is no confirmation step and no undo. The list then reloads, and the record you just filed usually disappears from it — because you are still looking at the folder you dragged it out of.

Moving several records at once. On a table layout, if you first tick the checkboxes of several rows and then drag one of the ticked rows, the whole selection moves together. Selection only exists on table layouts — see Selecting Records And Bulk Actions.

Moving folders. Folder rows can be dragged too: drop one onto another folder row, onto a breadcrumb entry, or onto the house icon to move it to the top level. Dropping a folder onto itself does nothing, and moving a folder into one of its own sub-folders is refused with a message strip.

Example — closing off a project year

It is January and the Projects list has folders Active, 2025 and 2026. You filter the list to Status is Completed and End date before 1 January 2026, which leaves 23 rows. You tick the header checkbox to select them all, then drag one of the selected rows onto the 2025 folder. All 23 move at once.

The list empties, because those records are no longer at the level you were browsing. Clicking Tree now shows 2025 with a count of 23. Next January the same three steps archive the next year, and the Active view stays short without anyone deleting anything.

Folders: Things Worth Knowing

• A record is in one folder at a time. Dropping it somewhere else moves it; it is never in two places.
• Dragging needs a mouse. On a phone or tablet the drag gesture generally does not work, and there is no alternative control for filing a record. Plan to do your filing at a desk.
• Nothing confirms a successful drop except the list reloading. If a drop is rejected you get a message strip explaining why.
• The folder you are in travels in the page address. A link you copy to a colleague opens the same folder, provided they can see that screen.
• The counts in the tree window are not permission-aware. They count everything filed there, so a folder can show 40 while showing you 12 rows if the rest are records you are not allowed to see. See Why Your Screen Differs.
• Emptying a folder is manual. Deleting the records inside also frees the folder, but there is no "move everything up" command.

Choosing Between A Filter, A Tag And A Folder

A short decision guide:

Two anti-patterns worth avoiding:

• Do not use tags for something that is already a field. If records have a Status field, tag chips saying Open and Closed will drift out of step with it the first time someone changes the status. Filter on the field instead.
• Do not use folders as a second status. A record can only be in one folder, so a folder tree that mixes two ideas — 2025 / Escalated / Germany — quickly becomes impossible to file into. Pick one axis for folders and use tags for the rest.

Tips And Gotchas

• Tags do not appear anywhere on a record's detail screen. The list screen is the only place to see or change them.
• The tag button and the tag chips only exist on screens whose layout has inline tagging switched on, and only on the table, sortable table, simple list and cards layouts.
• The tag strip can be placed on any layout, including calendar and board, and is independent of the row chips — you can have one without the other.
• Clicking a tag chip on a row filters the list; it does not open the record.
• The manage-tags window saves each click straight away, and "Clear all tags" takes effect immediately, with no confirmation and no undo.
• Tag search inside the manage-tags window needs at least two characters.
• Counts on the tag strip always include child tags, whatever the hierarchy setting says.
• "Remove filters" on an empty list does not clear your tag selection and does not take you out of the current folder. If a list is still unexpectedly empty after using it, check the tag strip and the breadcrumb.
• At the top level of a folder tree you are looking at unfiled records only — not at everything.
• Folder counts in the tree window are per folder, without sub-folders, and ignore your filters.
• A folder cannot be deleted until it is empty of both records and sub-folders.
• Neither tags nor folders update by themselves when a colleague changes something. Use the refresh button on the filter bar to pull the current state — see Filtering Your Data.

What To Ask Your Administrator For

You cannot configure any of this yourself, but each of the following is a normal request:

• "Please switch on tag chips for the Orders list so we can tag rows from there."
• "Please add the tag strip above the Tickets list."
• "Please create shared tags Escalated, Watch and Resolved this week, and allow them on tickets and on cases."
• "Please nest North and South under a Region tag so we can filter on the whole region at once."
• "Please give me the right to create private tags."
• "Please rename the shared tag Urgnet to Urgent — it is a shared name and I cannot change it."
• "Please add the folder panel to the Invoices list, and create year folders under it."
• "Please unpin the Archive folder so we can rename it."
• "The tag I need is not offered on contacts — please allow it on that record type as well."

Related Chapters

• Filtering Your Data
• Saved Views And Queries
• List Screens
• Selecting Records And Bulk Actions
• Record Detail Screens