Managing, merging, and pruning work item tags

The tag label on a work item can be selected to search for work items with one of the same tags. You can select all the results and right-click on the tag column to Change Tags.

The dialog isn't perfect but you can "refactor" tags. Remove redundant tags and select/add a tag then assign to all.

Tags can get out of control as it doesn't have any constraints to the tag name. However, your users should be aware that auto-complete is available for the field. This can help with misspellings and variants. There is also a warning when a new tag is being created. Users could use that as an indicator to use auto-complete to check for a suitable existing tag.

The tag label on a work item can be selected to search for work items with one of the same tags. You can select all the results and right-click on the tag column to Change Tags.

The dialog isn't perfect but you can "refactor" tags. Remove redundant tags and select/add a tag then assign to all.

Tags can get out of control as it doesn't have any constraints to the tag name. However, your users should be aware that auto-complete is available for the field. This can help with misspellings and variants. There is also a warning when a new tag is being created. Users could use that as an indicator to use auto-complete to check for a suitable existing tag.

You can also control which roles can actually add new tags to work items. See the Permissions section under the Team Configurations in the Process Configuration Editor for the Project Area. Restricting who can add new tags to members of a specific role like Product Owner, can insure that only approved tags can be used.

Unfortunately, you cannot remove/archive a work item tag from the list
of known tags. This is requested in work item 148611. Please feel free
to add a comment to that work item to indicate your interest/support.

Cheers,
Geoff

On 9/7/2011 11:23 AM, ebullient wrote:

Tags are great! But they can also get out of control (duplication with
spelling variants, long vs. short form, etc.).

Is there a way to clean up (merge / remove / archive) work item tags?

We are looking to use tags extensively: but their use becomes an issue
if there are too many choices that are all really the same thing
(maintaining queries can help, but is not the best answer).

You can also control which roles can actually add new tags to work items. See the Permissions section under the Team Configurations in the Process Configuration Editor for the Project Area. Restricting who can add new tags to members of a specific role like Product Owner, can insure that only approved tags can be used.

OOH!! I didn't know that bit.. that will help. =)

Unfortunately, you cannot remove/archive a work item tag from the list
of known tags. This is requested in work item 148611. Please feel free
to add a comment to that work item to indicate your interest/support.

Cheers,
Geoff

I will do, thanks.