Changes to On.Board's Participant Tagging

We are changing the way that tags are structured in the database.

Several issues with the way tags are managed in the system have been highlighted during recent development. You may be familiar with the 'social' functionality that was released back in May, where the participants in a social activity are grouped by their tags within tag families. For example, with the tags "Location:London" and "Cohort:May", the tag families are 'Location' and 'Cohort'. A tag family is selected as the group, so if in your program there was an activity where people in the same cohort are to be in the same social group, you would select the tag family "Cohort" and then all those with the tag "Cohort:May" would be in one group and then those with the tag "Cohort:June" would be in a different group, for example. You can have a group all with tags from the same family but different tags within those families, e.g. "Location:London", "Location:Manchester", "Location:Southampton". If you want to group participants in a social activity then it is the 'tag family' that must be selected.

However, the issue with the current structure is that tag families are only created when given to a participant. This would therefore need to be done before you can define your group for a social activity.   

The way the system is currently structured allows tags to be given to participants without a tag family, for example "London" rather than "Location:London". 

When we migrate all tags to the new structure, any tags that have been created without a family will be automatically given the tag family "Other", so if someone had the tag "London" this would become "Other:London".

If you wanted to change the tag family following the migration, you can do afterwards using the multi-action tool to search for participants with a particular tag e.g. "Other:London" and then select them all and add the tag "Location:London" and remove the previous tag "Other:London". Click here for more information. 

What will be different from an administrator's perspective? 

If you add participants using the bulk upload spreadsheet then a tag family will always be given along with the tag, as this will be the column heading.

However, if you assign tags using the multi-action tool then currently it allows you to assign tags without a family.

We are changing this so that it is mandatory to give a tag family with each tag. You will now be required to enter a tag family followed by the tag. E.g. select family 'Location' and then the tag 'London'.

Stay tuned for more information of the next phases of Tag Management...