Ah, tags.
This is a feature that most everyone is familiar with, and which you can find in pretty much any project management software. However, tags are often misused or completely ignored when organizing a workflow.
Before I joined ClickUp, I actually had a bit of an irrational fear of using tags in project management. What if I added so many tags that I completely negated their organizational effect? How do I categorize my tags for all of the different projects I’m working on?
Basically, I completely avoided tags, and it wasn’t until I experienced their implementation in ClickUp that I began to understand their value. Tags can be a truly awesome way to manage your tasks, especially when the tasks don’t have a concrete spot within your team’s structure.
The Three Benefits of ClickUp Tags
Organization
ClickUp helps ensure that your tags stay organized because they are implemented at the Space level.
This means if you have two different Spaces for web design and accounting, there won’t be any overlap between tags you’ve created specifically for each workflow. No need to wade through a billion unrelated tags to find the one you need!
On the flip side, if you move a tag to a Space that doesn’t currently have that tag, the Space will automatically inherit it. This cuts out a ton of manual work and lets you get back to the important stuff.
Link Tasks Together
Once you’ve created unique tags for each of your Spaces, you can begin to form connections between tasks in related projects. This helps clarify the purpose of each task for your entire team.
Manage Separate Workflows
The beauty of tags is that they illustrate task details that can’t be captured in other features. If custom statuses aren’t sufficient to separate your different workflows, tags can act as the extra reminders you need to separate projects and tasks.
Basically, ClickUp tags are all about setting your team up for organizational success! Now, how will you set yours up to make them work for you?
How You Can Use Tags in ClickUp
If you’re using ClickUp to run a business, chances are you’ve developed some processes with your teammates to address repeated tasks. Maybe you’re working on a website and need to establish sprints with your engineers for monthly releases. Or you might run a summer camp and set up annual safety training sessions for your counselors.
Either way, tags can be a great way to provide clarity for your entire team regarding the task at hand.
Note: Want to know more about setting up tags in ClickUp? Check out this help doc!
Keep Track of Client-Reported Issues
At ClickUp, we have a specific process for when clients report potential bugs. We in the client success team create a task for our developers and add the tag “hotfix”. This tag lets our development team know that the task relates to a user-reported issue and needs to be addressed immediately. It’s an excellent way to bridge the gap between our technical and client success teams, and ensures that we can assist our users as quickly as possible!
You can even filter by specific tags within a ClickUp Space, making it easy to address specific issues that may not fit within a specific status or List.
Monitor your Sales Pipeline
Let’s say you’re a shoe salesman. You’re in a very specific line of work, and yet you have an extremely broad client base. How do you keep track of all of your prospective sales that span across different demographics?
The answer (as you may have guessed) is to create some tags!
Here’s how you might set up your workflow in this instance:
- Create a Project called “Prospects” within your “Sales Process” Space.
- Make Lists qualifying each business type you’ll be reaching out to (i.e. “Small Business Owners”, “Corporations” etc.)
- Create tags that you can add to tasks once you reach out to prospective clients. These could include “Hot Prospect”, “Follow Up”, and “Referral”
By utilizing tasks in this way, you’ll be able to clarify where you are in the sales process with each client, as well as what types of potential clients you’re currently interacting with. This process is effective for both personal and team organizations!
Organize Client Feedback
Let’s say that you’re a wedding planner and a couple hires you to plan their wedding.
Not only do they want insight into every detail of your planning process, but so do their parents and grandparents. Heck, even Great Aunt Gertrude wants to know who’s baking the cake.
You want to keep the communication pipeline open between yourself and your clients, but you also understand that you need to develop a process to consider their feedback without overloading them with unnecessary information.
How do you achieve this?
A: Carrier pigeons
B: Message in a bottle
C: Tag
While pigeons and bottled messages do have their given purposes, I’d recommend using tags in this case.
As members of the wedding party write in with suggestions, why not create tags with their names and add them to a task to consider the idea? You can add name tags for each person that chimes in supporting the suggestion.
You can even add tags if events are supposed to occur at a specific time or place (i.e. “evening”, “after processional”, or “banquet hall”).
All of these tags add more detail to help you think freely as you plan, and then implement your creativity once the big days arrive.
If You’ve Got a Tag, It’s in the Bag
Yes, I have chosen to end this post with a bad rhyme about tags.
The point is, as long as you’ve got a plan for how you’d like to use them, tags can make a huge difference in how you think about structuring projects and tasks. They’re sufficiently flexible to allow free-flowing creativity but descriptive enough to add clarity and nuance to your workflow. Now, quit being a drag and add in some tags.
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.