What is the point of tagging in Confluence?

Question

I'm new to using Confluence for creating support documentation.  When you create a How To/Troubleshooting document in Confluence there's an option to add tags/labels.  However, what is the point of adding these tags/labels?  Is it for ease of access for support agents when we try to search for articles?  Do users search for articles via tags?  It seems like Jira's ticketing system searches Confluence via text in the articles alone vs. using labels/tags, so hence why I'm asking who the tags/labels are intended for and what purpose they serve.  Thanks!

Jason Hills · Answer

Probably too late, but ...

There are at least 3 ways to search via search barsin Confluence.

Two of those ways can be setup to filter by tags.

So, for example, in my internal knowledge base we filter our keyword-heavy whitepapers with a different label than regular, short articles, else a handful of whitepapers would push out dozens of other articles. Users have to go to the whitepaper section to get just whitepaper results.

There's far, far more.

Look up how to use page properties reports, filter by label, or content by label. If anyone wants, I can send screenshots of proof of concept pages about what that can accomplish. Along with detailed instructions that I can't find elsewhere.

Stavros_Rougas_EasyApps · Answer

@Abigail Mannwhen you get a lot of pages in a space, any space, it gets messy. In theory things are put in the right 'folders'. In reality someone has to keep things organized.

Labels are similar. They are useful to find and categorize content but not unless they are used well.

@Matt Reiner _K15t_at @K15t GmbH has a good video on using labels.

Basically we have had to grapple with labels ourselves and we decided to built an app that does bulk editing but restricts some features like merging. It's called Label Manager by Easy Apps.

Abigail Mann · Answer

Hi Repi,

This article doesn't answer my question because it seems like the Confluence search feature isn't searching based on tags but on the text of the article.  There doesn't seem to be a way to modify the search for tags.  So although your linked article claims that tags/labels are used to "make them (articles) easier to group and find" I'm not seeing the evidence of how that's accomplished.