Using Tags to Organize Contacts in ActivistCentral

Tags are a simple way to organize the people in ActivistCentral.

You can use them to identify groups that matter to your organization—such as Volunteer, Board Member, Donor, Steward, or anything else that helps you organize your contacts.

A contact can have more than one Tag, and the same Tag can be assigned to as many contacts as you need.

Create a Tag

Select Tags from the left sidebar.

At the top of the Tags page, enter a name and click Create Tag.

Once created, the Tag is available throughout your organization and can be assigned to contacts.

The All tags section shows your existing Tags and the number of contacts assigned to each one. You can also search your Tags, sort them by name or usage, rename them, or delete Tags you no longer need.

Add Tags to a contact

To add a Tag to one person, open the contact and select Edit Contact.

Scroll to the Tags section and select + Add tag. Choose the Tag you want to assign. You can add multiple Tags to the same contact.

Click Save when you're finished.

To remove a Tag from the contact, remove it from the Tags section and save the contact again. This removes the Tag from that person without deleting the Tag itself.

[IMAGE: Edit Contact showing the Tags section and + Add tag]

Add or remove Tags for multiple contacts

You don't have to edit contacts one at a time.

From the Contacts directory, select the people you want to update. The bulk action bar lets you choose Add Tag or Remove Tag and apply one or more Tags to the selected contacts.

If your search or filters contain more contacts than are visible on the current page, you can also choose to select all matching contacts.

This is useful when you're organizing a large group—for example, adding a Volunteer Tag to everyone who participated in a particular program.

Tags need to exist before you can assign them manually or through bulk actions. Create new Tags from the Tags page first.

Find contacts using Tags

Tags become especially useful when you need to find a particular group of people.

On the Contacts page, use Filter by tags to select one or more Tags.

When you use multiple Tags, ActivistCentral gives you two options:

• Match any selected tag finds contacts who have at least one of the Tags you selected.
• Match all selected tags finds contacts who have every Tag you selected.

For example, selecting Volunteer and Donor with Match any would find people who are Volunteers, Donors, or both.

Using Match all would find only people who have both Tags.

You can combine Tag filters with the other tools in the Contacts directory, including search and phone or email status filters.

If you create a combination you expect to use again, you can select Save Filter as List. Saved Lists are live, so contacts can move into or out of the List as their information and Tags change.

Rename or delete a Tag

You can manage existing Tags from the Tags page.

Select Rename to change a Tag's name. Renaming a Tag does not remove it from the contacts already using it.

Be more careful with Delete.

Deleting a Tag removes it from the contacts who currently have it. If the Tag is being used by a Saved List, deleting it can also change which contacts match that List—and may affect the audience of future or draft outreach using it.

ActivistCentral will warn you about affected Saved Lists before you confirm the deletion.

Messages that have already been queued or sent are not removed, and existing call queues are not changed.

Tag deletion cannot be undone.

Tags, Custom Fields, or Lists?

These tools work together, but each has a different job.

Tags are labels you attach to people. Use them when you want an easy way to identify and group contacts.

Custom Fields store additional information about a contact. Think of them as adding your own columns to the contact record.

Lists save search and filter criteria as reusable, live groups of contacts.

For example, you might use a Volunteer Tag to identify volunteers, a Custom Field to store each person's preferred volunteer activity, and a Saved List to find volunteers who also meet other criteria for a particular outreach effort.

Keep Tags simple

Tags are most useful when their meaning is clear.

You don't need a Tag for every piece of information you know about someone. Use Tags for labels and groups that will help your organization find and work with people later. Use Custom Fields when you need to store a specific piece of information instead.

As your contact directory grows, a thoughtful set of Tags can make it much easier to find the right people when you need them.