What are tags?
Adding tags to contacts
Viewing tags on contacts
Filtering a grid by tags
Creating a tag field on another table
Adding tags to a custom screen
Frequently asked questions
Video tutorial

What are tags?

Tags are a way to assign a label or category to a record, most commonly a customer contact. Tags work better than assigning a traditional category (using a dropdown menu) to such a record because you can assign multiple tags to the same record. For example, you could tag a contact as a "Friend", "Partner" and "Influencer" meaning they fall into all three of these categories. Then, you could do a quick search for all contacts tagged as "Friend" or run a marketing campaign to all contacts tagged as being an "Influencer". Best of all, tags can limit the amount of customization you need to do to a screen, since they remove the need for custom fields (e.g. Friend, Partner and Influencer fields) on a screen!

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Adding tags to contacts

Tags are assigned to the contact, rather than a customer, because this allows you to categorize people rather than companies or organizations. To assign a tag to a contact:

1. From your Method CRM, click either Customers and Contacts List or Leads and Contacts List.
   
   
2. Click Go to... next to your selected customer.
   
   
3. Click the Contacts subtab. In the Contacts grid, locate the contact you wish to edit, and click Edit Contact to open the Edit Contact screen.
   
   
4. Hover your mouse over the tag icon in the top-left.
   
   
5. Select the tags you wish to apply. If there are not any tags, you can a create new one here simply by typing it in and clicking create.

   When you move your mouse outside the tag window, it will disappear unless there is a new tag being created. So be careful where you move your mouse!

6. Save your contact. Your tags will now appear in the Tags column on all grids where customers and contacts are listed. You can learn how to search using columns in our grid functionality article.
   

If you have a custom version of the contacts screen, and you don't have the tag icon in the top-left, please see Adding tags to a custom screen below.

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Viewing tags on contacts

The standard Customers and Contacts List and Leads and Contact List screens have a Tags column. Also, the Edit Customer and Edit Lead screens have a Tags column in their Contacts grids. You can view the tags in tag bubbles, as well as filter the grids by tags (see grid functionality above).

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Filtering a grid by tags

Tags have special filtering properties. Here are some tips:

• There are no partial matches, which means you have to type out the full tag name if you're searching using the column header. For example, if you have a "Partner" tag, typing "Partn" in the filter will not give any results.
  
  
• If you type in "Friend,Partner" or "Friend OR Partner" it will include any contacts who are tagged with either or both of the "Friend" or "Partner" tags.
  
  
• If you type in "Friend + Partner" or "Friend AND Partner" it will include any contacts who are tagged with BOTH "Friend" and "Partner". If a contact is just a "Friend", but not a "Partner", this contact won't show up.
  
  
• If you type in "Friend NOT Influencer" it will include any contacts who are tagged with "Friend", but exclude any of them that are also tagged with "Influencer".
  
  
• If you type in "(Friend OR Partner) NOT Influencer", it will include any contact that is a "Friend" or a "Partner", but if they are an "Influencer" they will be excluded.

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Creating a tag field on another table

Any table can support tags. Simply create a field with the reserved name of "TagList"!

If you're adding a TagList field, we recommend you set the length of the field to 4000 characters.

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Adding tags to a custom screen

In order to add tags to a custom screen, the screen needs to be based on a table with a "TagList" field (e.g. the Contacts table). To add tags to such a screen:

1. Right click the screen and click Customize.
   
   
2. In the Designer, drag the TagList field onto the screen.

   We recommend you set the Caption Location of the field to "none".

3. Click Publish. The field should now appear on the live version of the screen, and will work as we've described above!
   

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Frequently asked questions

Q. Why did Method come with tags on the contacts table instead of the customers table?
A. Contacts are more detailed than customers, since a customer can often represent an organization with many people (contacts) working there. Since you have relationships, conversations and communications with people, it is more useful to be able to categorize people (contacts) rather than organizations (customers).

Q. Where are tags stored?
A. Tag names are stored in a "Tag" table. However, the values are stored per record in the "TagList" field.

Q. Why are tags created on one table not available to others?
A. To avoid clutter and to give tags appropriate context, tags are only used on the table they were created for. For example, if you create a "Friend" tag for your contacts table, it wouldn't make sense to show up on tags listed for the Item table.

Q. Can I have more than one TagList field per table?
A. No, a table can only have a single TagList field on it.

Q. What is the format I need for importing?
A. Tags are stored in the TagList field, separate by commas, with no spaces. The first and last tag are wrapped with a comma. So, if you had a contact you were importing that was a friend and a partner, you could import them with this format: ",Friend,Partner,".

At this time, importing a new tag into a field doesn't automatically create a new tag. For example: if you imported "Friend,Partner,Competitor," and "Competitor" was not an existing tag in Method, after the import "Competitor" may display temporarily, but as soon as you hover over the tags "Competitor" will disappear. Instead, Method recommends you first import new tags into the Tag table, and make sure you specify the correct table the tag belongs to - or just manually enter your unique tags before importing.

Q. Why don't tags appear as bubbles when they are linked fields?
A. The grids are looking for fields named "TagList" in order to create a bubble. So if a linked field is named "ContactTagList" it is not an exact match for TagList.

Q. How do I remove, change or merge tags?
A. Hover over the tag icon, and click Manage Tags.

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Video tutorial

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