About File Tagging

You can assign "tags" to files in Flare, even folders. You can use file tags for many different purposes, such as assigning authors or milestones to topics. Flare lets you generate reports based on the tags that are assigned. This makes project development easier to track, manage, and schedule.

Example

example

Let's say you want to keep track of which authors are writing which topics, as well as the status of each topic (e.g., started, in review, completed). Therefore, you can create one file tag set to list all of your authors and another file tag set to list various topic statuses.

Next, you open the Properties dialog for each necessary file (in this case, topics) to associate certain author or status tags with each.

After you have associated tags to topics and a few weeks have passed, you might decide to create a report to see how each author is progressing on each topic.

When you generate the report, it might look something like this:

Steps for Using the File Tagging Feature

Following are the basic steps involved with using the file tagging feature in Flare.

Add file tag set The first step in using topic tagging is to add a file tag set (Project>Advanced>Add File Tag Set). Each tag set stores possible tag values and their comments for one tag type (e.g., an "Author" tag set only contains author names, and a "Status" tag set only contains status names). A factory tag set template is available with pre-designed tag types ("Author" and "Status"). However, you can create custom tag types for any purpose you can think of. See Adding File Tag Sets.

A file tag set has an .flfts extension and is stored in the Project Organizer under the Advanced folder.
Create file tags After you add a file tag set, you can create multiple tags within it. See Creating File Tags.
Associate tags with files Once you have created file tags, you can associate them with the appropriate files. If you associate certain tags with a folder, all of the files in that folder will be associated with those tags. See Associating Tags with Files.
(Optional) Edit file tag sets You might need to edit a file tag set from time to time. For example, if you have a file tag set designed to hold author names and you hire a new writer, you need to open the file tag set and add that author's name. You also might decide to change the tag type (e.g., change "Author" to "Contributor"). See Editing File Tag Sets.
Create and generate reports At any time you can create and generate a report to see the data for topics associated with any file tag set. To do this, select the appropriate tag set option(s) in the Report Editor. These options are always named "Files With Tag: [Tag Type Name]" (e.g., Files With Tag: Author). See About Reports.

Note: These tags are intended to be assigned to entire files, not to paragraphs or other content within a topic.

If you send topics to reviewers from time, there are a couple of features that can help streamline the process. By associating status file tags with topics and using the File List window pane to select topics for review, you might find that the process is much quicker and easier.