How to Build a Tag Structure & Tagging Best Practices

As you think about the knowledge you would like to populate in Guru, it's helpful to also consider how you will want to organize this knowledge in a way that will be helpful and accessible by everyone on your team.

Tags can help you organize your knowledge so that your team can easily find knowledge when they are looking for a specific Card or discovering new knowledge created across Boards and Collections in Guru.

Follow these instructions to create a Tag strategy that will help your team adopt and leverage Tags effectively!

Table of Contents

1) Select "Collection Champs" for each Collection

Teamwork makes the dreamwork! ✨ The more users invested in the Knowledge Philosophy of Guru the easier it will be to create and maintain a knowledge-driven culture that increases user adoption, team engagement and the trust score of your knowledge base.

These users can be the Collection Owner or Subject Matter Experts of your Collections, managers of your team or just Guru-enthusiasts who are on board to help make your knowledge in Guru as best as it can be! Here at Guru, we like to call these users our "Collection Champs". Have these users ready and on-deck to mobilize change throughout the process.

Note: Please note that users must have at least Author access to a Collection in order to create Cards and add Tags.

If you are just starting out and have not yet selected your "Collection Champs", do not worry! You are able to also go through this process yourself. However, having other users' help can increase team accountability and drive adoption of the new tag process.

2) Pull Together a list of "All Team Tags"

Let's think about your team as whole! 🌎Think about your use case, your Collections in Guru and the knowledge that will be documented across Guru by your entire team.

This is the time to think big-picture and envision what Tags will connect your Guru knowledge with what content your team is searching for. These are the Tags that users from all different departments will need at their disposal, which is why we call them your ALL Team Tags.

Create a Guru Card to write all your Tags down or use our Tag Structure Worksheet to help you stay organized as you brainstorm.

Don't worry if this is not your perfect, end-all list of all tags that will ever live in your Guru instance. As a knowledge base that has a good Knowledge Philosophy as a foundation, there is an understanding that knowledge is living, growing and evolving over time. Within this ecosystem, remember that Cards and Tags do the same. There will always be time to refine this list of Tags later.

Examples of All Team Tags

• Tags for your personas and use cases

• Tags for each feature or product in your catalogue

• Tags for company goals or metrics

PRO Tip: Organize this Tag list into different "buckets" or groups based on topics, types of assets, steps in process, etc.

3) Create a Tag category and Populate your Tags

Now its time to move to Tag Manager! 🚀 Create a Tag Category titled ALL Team Tags where Tags your entire team will be leveraging on an everyday basis will live. Once you add these Tags to the Tag Category, it's time to create Tags based on specific departments and Collections. Are you ready? Let's go!

4) Meet with your designated "Collection Champs" on Tags

Time to put on your Collection Champ hat! 🎩 Meet with you designated Collection Champs to help you create a list of Tags specific to the Collection or Department in a Guru Card.

These are the Tags that are owned by the primary Authors of this Collection. For instance, the Marketing Team creates tags for #Blog or #Competitive Battle Card since these Cards are created by Authors in the Marketing Collection. If your team has already started authoring knowledge in their Collection, even better! Use this knowledge as guide for what tags to implement into your Tag list.

Once you have your list of Tags specific to a department or Collection, organize this list into different topics, groups, etc. similar to how our organized the Tags in the ALL Team Tags. Now, create a Tag Category in Tag Manager and title it [NAME OF COLLECTION/TEAM] Team Tags.

Now, meet with your other Collection Champs to do the same for the other departments and Collections to complete a list of Tags relevant to their Collection(s).

PRO tip: Refer to your Board titles for existing knowledge to help create tags related to broader topics in your Collection. Then drill-down to create more specific Tags that can be layered on these Tags.

Need some inspiration? We have included more examples below that hopefully will help you think through what Collection should be the keepers on what Tags.

Customer Experience Team Tags

• #Customer FAQ

• #Customer Slide Deck

• #Implementation

• #Customer Training

Product Team Tags

• #Feature Breakdown

• #Product Roadmap

• #Early Access

• #Feature Release

5) Build a Team Tag Architecture to Bring all the Tags together

Let's get this show on the road! 🚙 Now that you have created Tag Categories for your ALL Team Tags and for your Collection or specific departments, it's time to bring all the pieces together. To help you create your Tag Architecture, it's beneficial to take a step back to see how all your Tags work together. To help you visualize this architecture, it's helpful to open Tag Manager for an overview of all Tags you've created and to picture all of the Tag Categories as parts of a car.

Your ALL Team Tags are the hood and carriage of your car. They are the most basic, outside layer of the car but hold everything together (technically, the axle does, but you get the picture!). Just like the hood and carriage is visible for everyone who looks at your Car, these are the Tags that are most visible and most used by your team as a whole.

The [Collection/Name of Team] Team Tags are the wheels, brakes, battery, muffler, shock absorbers, transmission and bells and whistles of your car. [insert more car parts here that come to mind 😅]. Each part has a specific function and purpose for how it is used. These Tags are less visible to the broader team's eye. They are Tags that should be used by each team to surface knowledge that is most relevant to their role, materials, processes in their day-to-day workflow.

Just like you can teach someone to drive stick-shift, you can also teach other departments how to use some of the Tags in your Team Tags Category that are most relevant to them.

6) Re-tag existing knowledge using your new Tags

Tag, you're it! 🏃‍♀️With your tool belt of Tags assembled and Collection Champs by your side, it's time to tag any existing knowledge using your Tag Structure as your guide. Re-tag the Collection by either navigating through each Card on your Boards or utilizing Card Manager to tag Card quickly by using Guru's bulk Tag action.

We advise dividing and conquering this project by designating specific Boards for your Collection Champs to tackle and tag.

As you work through tagging the Collections, make a note of any additional Tags you may want to add to the Team specific Tags or ALL Team Tags. This is great to to find any Tags you might have overlooked!

Once you are finished tagging a Collection, give you and your Collection Champs a virtual high-five 🤚for doing an awesome job.

7) Educate the broader team on how to use Tags

Share the wisdom to help your team! 🤓Now that your Collection or Collections are tagged in adherence to your shiny new Tag Structure, it's time to educate the broader for how to use them to both search and create Cards.

For Search:

Author a Card for "How to Search [BLANK] Collection" and include a list of the Tags most relevant to each team and how they can use them.

Send a​n Announcement on this Card and make sure to point out what Tags are in the ALL Team Tags and which Tags are in the specific Team Tag Categories relevant to them.

See an example of our Public Card created by our internal Guru-on-Guru Team here on how we educated our team to search using these new Tags with a Template that can be modified by Collection.

For Card Creation:

Create Card Templates for your Team to use for authoring knowledge in their Collections. In the Card Template, assign auto-tags that are relevant to each type of Card.
Additional tip: Create a note at the top of the Card reminding Authors to Tag the Card following the Tag Structure and link out to Card you created for "How to Search [BLANK] Collection". Here is an example from one of our Guru Card Templates: ❗️Note: Please remember to tag the #INSERTNAME OF TAG found in [Card Link] ❗️ added as text at the top.

8) Create a Tag Maintenance Cadence and Check in

Tag, Tag, repeat? 🤔I'm sure you are wondering "OK I created a Tag Structure, tagged our Collections and educated my team on how to use Tags, now what?" In order to make sure Tag Structure aligns with your team's Knowledge Philosophy, it is important to continue to monitor, audit and create new Tags as your knowledge in Guru grows and evolves.

To ensure that Tags are continually being updated and added to Cards, we suggest creating a cadence with your Collection Champs to conduct a Guru Audit and Tag Maintenance Session.

As we want this process to work best for you and your team, choose a meeting interval that meets the needs of your knowledge base. Some teams we work with do bi-weekly sessions (1 hour each) or opt for a monthly meeting for 2 hours. The best advice we can give to inspire your team to help is to have fun with it! 😃 We've seen teams get creative and have a virtual "Tagging Party" with music to make these sessions engaging for those who volunteered to help. Two, three or four set of hands are better than one in a building a long-lasting and fruitful knowledge base! 🤝