(Archived) When to Tag?

[lockiedownunder 1]

Just wondering what is the recommended. I am concerned that I'm going to end up with too many Tags.

When do you Tag and when to just rely on search.

For example if I have a large number of client records and I want to see all the customers in one suburb.

Should I search the suburb name or should I create a Tag for each suburb?

Should I search for customers with accounts or Tag them?

[jefito 5,589]

I imagine that selecting via tag is more efficient than via searching all of your notes for specific words.

It's possible that you can create too many tags, but I wouldn't worry about it. In your case, it sounds as though one of your common needs is to locate all of the customers in one of some number of suburbs. How large is that number? 10? 100? 1000? 10 tags should be easy to manage using tags; 100 should be reasonable to manage with tags (maybe using the sub-tag system); 1000 might be a pain to manage (and you should resort to search, providing that the suburb name is in each record).

The thing to do is to think about what you will do often, and optimize that. Things that you do less often don't need to be optimized.

~Jeff

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

There may not be such a thing as too many tags, but I do think people tend to overtag when they first start using a system such as EN. From your brief description, it sounds like you might want to tag customers by suburbs and possibly if they are customers or prospects (if I'm interpreting your example correctly.) Or not tag prospects but do tag customers (which reduces the work flow, since you don't have to tag prospects or remove a tag if/when they become customers.)

If you wanted to create a tag for all suburbs, you could make your tag list a bit more manageable by having a tag "Suburbs" & then nest all suburb tags under that. This way, when you're searching for something else, you can close the suburb tag.

But don't underestimate the power of the search, either. One thing I use EN for is to keep track of clothing donation boxes in my area. Whenever I'd get ready to get rid of things, I could never remember where they were ("I remember seeing one the other day but forget where!"), so I'd have to drive further to the Goodwill store. Now, I take a photo with my phone & email it to EN along with the location. I don't need a tag for these entries, since I always make sure they have the words "clothing donation Goodwill" in the notes. A quick search on the words "Goodwill donation" brings all the applicable notes up.

[lockiedownunder 1]

Thanks guys, Of course that's not all I have tagged. I have pictures of product that are tagged by brand, model and type. A Table of brochures again tagged by brand, model, type.

So as you can imagine mixing business with personal and my tag list is growing. I have nested them and that does help to manage them, I was just wondering if I'm going tag mad as search does do a good job, provided the document has the right keywords in it.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Here is how I handle your first question about companies in a specific suburb (or city).

All my company notes are tagged with the same format:

Com-IBM

Com-Target

Com-UPS

So if I wanted to find all notes for companies in Rochester, I would use the following search:

tag:com-* Rochester

[delectatus 0]

Just wondering what is the recommended. I am concerned that I'm going to end up with too many Tags.

When do you Tag and when to just rely on search.

For example if I have a large number of client records and I want to see all the customers in one suburb.

Should I search the suburb name or should I create a Tag for each suburb?

Should I search for customers with accounts or Tag them?

I am the poster-child for overtagging. I add tags based on the content, the source, the author: all sorts of stuff. I don't know how many tags I have because it would take too long to count them. But it works for me.

This nice thing about tagging is that it's a revocable decision. There's nothing wrong with experimenting.