Understanding tags

Overview

Tags make it easy to track certain topics in your inboxes, set up rules to sort messages automatically, report on trends in analytics, and use as private folders to file your messages into.

How it works

Private and team tags

Tags are either private for you or shared with your team: 

• Private tags will always appear with a lock icon to distinguish them. When you add a private tag to a team conversation, it’s still only visible to you. Also, all your private conversations will have the tag Inbox on them by default, which makes possible the ability to drag-and-drop conversations out of your Inbox and file into a private tag.
• When you apply a team tag to a team conversation, it will be visible to everyone with access to it. Applying a team tag to a private conversation in your inbox will not share it with your team automatically.

Gmail and Office 365 tag sync

When you connect a Gmail or Office365 account as a channel in Front, your labels (Gmail) and folders (Office365) will sync to Front as tags, including any nesting you’ve set up - granted that those labels or folders were used on the messages that are imported into Front. In other words, if you have Gmail labels or Office365 folders that were not used on the imported conversations, then Front does not create those matching tags. If you connect an account as a private channel, the tags will be private; if you connect an account as a team channel, the tags will be shared with your team. 

Creating and using tags

Create a new tag

From the conversation's tag menu

• Click the tag icon at the top right of any conversation.
• Select New tag from the list, or simply type the name of the tag you want to create and select the Create tag option that appears in the tag menu.
• Give your tag a name.
• Select private or for team access for the tag.
• Highlight the tag with a color or emoji if you’d like.
• Select whether the tag should be nested under another tag. If you create a nested tag, you can see the full tag trail when you apply a subtag. You can nest up to 5 levels of tags. Nested tags can be used for both private and team tags.
• Select whether you want this new tag to be shown in your workspace by default for easy access.
• Select whether you want the tag to display in the list view of conversations.
• Click Create.

From Settings

• Click your avatar, then into Settings and Tags or My tags.
• Click the blue button to Add a tag.
• Name the tag.
• Highlight the tag with a color or emoji if you’d like.
• Select whether the tag should be nested under another tag. If you create a nested tag, you can see the full tag trail when you apply a subtag. You can nest up to 5 levels of tags. Nested tags can be used for both private and team tags.
• Select whether you want this new tag to be shown in your workspace by default for easy access.
• Select whether you want the tag to display in the list view of conversations.
• Click Save.

Editing a tag

You have 3 ways to edit tags:

1) From the conversation: Click on the tag and click Edit or delete.

2) From the pinned tag: Hover to the right of the tag and click the 3 vertical dots that will appear, then click Edit or delete.

3) From Settings: Click your avatar and into Settings, then click My tags for private tags or Tags under the team section. Click on the tag you want to edit and make your changes.

Highlight tags to make them stand out

You can highlight tags with colors or emojis to make them more visible on your conversations. This helps you visually identify what’s urgent or understand the topic before reading a message.

You can set a color or emoji when you first create the tag, as well as edit it afterwards by clicking the applied tag and selecting Edit. You can use either a highlight color or an emoji. 

💡Tip: Use the highlight option in conjunction with the tag option to Show in conversation list so that the tag also shows on your conversation list in Front.

Tag a conversation

You can tag a conversation by clicking the tag icon. You can type the tag name you want to add in the search bar, create a new tag, or scroll through all tags. You can add as many tags as you want, though Front will collapse the tags when there are many tags on a conversation. 

Automate tagging with rules

You can also automatically add tags using rules. To do this, add an action using Add tag. You may also list more than one tag.

Rules are also a great way to use tags to trigger actions. For example, you can set up a rule that when a conversation is tagged “🐛Bug”, it’s automatically moved to your “Tech Support” folder and assigned to an engineer.

You can also set up rules so that the rule will fire if a conversation is tagged with any tag using the Conversation tagged/untagged condition under When:

Team rules with this When condition will fire whenever a team tag is added to the conversation. Private rules with this When condition will fire whenever a private tag or team tag is added to the conversation.

Manage tags in Settings

You can create, view, and edit all tags by going to Settings, and selecting My tags for private tags or Tags for team tags. You can create new tags from here in Settings, and also edit specific tags by clicking into them. 

Use tags as folders for filing

Read here for more details about using tags as private folders!

Nested tags in Settings / Analytics

The tag path will be displayed in any tag dropdown menu, however, the tag path will not display in the analytics dashboard itself.