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Tags

Tags let you quickly attach a simple bit of data to the people and organizations in Populi. Among other things, they help you identify groups of people who share the tagged characteristic; this comes in handy if you wish to communicate with them in a group or run a report focused on them. For example, you tag a group of male students with your custom Athletic Scholarship tag. You can then email all of them to remind them to keep their grades up to maintain their scholarship qualifications. Or you might run a report on them to check on their cumulative credits and GPAs.

There are two types of tags:

  • Custom tags are created as-needed by Staff users at your school. You can use them for almost anything.
  • System tags are added to people when some other event in Populi triggers it. For example, an undergraduate student completes a certain number of credits, earning him the Sophomore tag. Another student is disciplined and receives the Suspended tag. An alum donates $4,000 to the Library and receives the Active Donor tag. You can also create custom system tags based on your school's honors and program standings.

You can't create custom tags that match system tags. Nor should you use tags to track information that Populi already tracks. For example, don't tag people with the Student role as Students.

Custom tags

Here's how to create custom tags and add existing tags to people and organizations:

  1. Go to the person or organization's profile.
  2. In the leftmost column under the profile picture, you'll see a heading called Custom Tags. Click edit tags.
  3. Type the tag. As you type, existing tags may be suggested.
    • To create a new tag, finish typing it and press the enter/return key on your keyboard. This creates the tag and adds it to this person/organization.
    • To select an existing tag, click it with your mouse or use your keyboard's arrow keys to highlight it and press enter/return.
  4. Repeat step 3 as often as you need to.
  5. Click to remove a tag from this person/organization. This does not delete the tag from anyone else's profile!
  6. When you're finished, click done editing tags.

You can tag and untag students using the Data Slicer; you can do the same for people and organizations in Contacts.

Tag pages

If you click a tag on a profile or find it using Search, you'll be taken to its page. You'll see every person and org who has the tag and you can perform a number of actions:

  • Export: Create a spreadsheet of the people or organizations with the tag.
  • Email/Text People: Communicate with the people who have the tag.
  • Print Address Labels: Create mailing labels for both people and organizations with the tag.
  • Apply Communication Plan to People: Put everyone with the tag on a communication plan.

Contacts > Tags

Contacts > Tags shows you all the custom and system tags at your school.

  • Merge tags by clicking next to the tag you wish to merge into another. Pick a tag with which to merge it, and if you wish, rename the combined tag.
  • Edit a tag by clicking , or delete a tag by clicking .
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17 Comments

  • 1
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    Mark Braisher

    I need to delete a custom tag, do not see how?

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    Jana Hjelmervik

    I would also like to delete a custom tag that is no longer needed. How?

  • 0
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    Brendan O'Donnell

    Jana and Mark,

    We don't have a way to delete custom tags, but if you merge a custom tag with another, that effectively deletes the merged tag. I'll update the article to make that a little more clear.

    thanks,

    -brendan

  • 0
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    David Stauffer

    FYI the link re: locks is dead.

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    Brendan O'Donnell

    Thanks, David. I just fixed that link.

  • 0
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    David Stauffer

    Just noticed that "Organization's" "Data Slicer" "Honors" & "Programs" are also all dead links.

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    David Stauffer

    But I had a real question too.  We consider any student who has completed one full semester of courses to be an Alumnus.  Is there any way we can tweak the alumni tag to apply to more than just students who achieved a degree?  It won't let us apply it manually because its a system tag.  Any thoughts?

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    Tracy Brockman

    We are in the same spot as David.  We consider anyone who completed at least one full semester to be an Alumni for Advancement purposes.  Just wanted to let you know this is needed in more than one institution and would be very helpful to us.

  • 0
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    Brendan O'Donnell

    David and Tracy,

    We're considering ways to loosen the way the system tag defines Alumni, but it's not a front-burner issue for us. Feel free to bring this up in the Feature Request Forum, where it'll be seen by more people than this particular thread.

    In the meantime, perhaps a custom tag would take care of you—if students exit before they get a degree, perhaps "Alum: Early Exit" or something else appropriate to the situation... You can find all such people in your system in the Data Slicer, and then use the Actions > Tag Results function to apply it to all those students. That'd be the best approach given current functionality.

  • 0
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    Elizabeth Reed

    Can students see their tags? Who can edit a student's tags?

  • 0
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    Brendan O'Donnell

    Elizabeth,

    Students cannot see their tags—sometimes tags contain information about the student that Staff doesn't want them to see. To add or change tags, you must have the Staff role.

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    Patty Tsai

    Brendan - are you referring to system tags or custom tags not being visible to students?

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    Brendan O'Donnell

    Patty,

    Students cannot see any tags, whether system or custom.

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    Kurtis Habecker

    Is there an Feature Request out there for loosening the way the system defines Alumni? I've searched but its not obvious from the Subject lines. We'd like to see this as well although for now we'll explore defining a custom tag.

  • 0
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    Brendan O'Donnell

    Kurtis,

    I seem to recall you asking us about this a long while ago. How would you define Alumni? The current system tag setup goes by the traditional sense of "someone to whom we granted a degree"—and, unless I'm mistaken, this is the definition assumed in certain reporting statistics. Given that (that is, the majority of use-cases), custom tags might be the way to go... but, since you can't use custom tags that are the same as system tags, you'll need to adjust your nomenclature.

    Feel free to submit a new feature request on this.

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    Annie Andrews

    This was helpful! I was looking for how to merge tags, and you gave me the answer I needed. Thank you!

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    Cynthia Harrison

    Is it possible to add a custom tag to a group of students all at the same time instead of going into each individual profile to add a tag?

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