Tag Categories
A tag category is a dimension you sort your tags into — Customer, Project, Site, Line. Tags stay flat and independent; categories tell Pulse which tags belong to the same question, so you can filter your monitors along several dimensions at once.
Categories are optional. A tag without a category is listed as Uncategorized and keeps working exactly as before.
Why Use Categories
A plant with 400 monitors quickly ends up with 40 tags in one long, unsorted list — customer names next to line numbers next to criticality labels. Categories fix that in three ways:
- Tags are grouped where you pick them. The tag selector and every tag filter show one group per category, so "which customer is this?" and "which line is this?" are separate questions instead of one long list.
- Filters combine across dimensions. Selecting
Acmefrom Customer andLine 3plusLine 4from Site answers "everything I run for Acme on lines 3 or 4" in one filter. - Some dimensions allow only one answer. A monitor belongs to exactly one customer. Turn multi-select off for that category and picking a second customer replaces the first, so the mistake can't happen.
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Good categories are the axes you would sort a spreadsheet by: Customer, Project, Site, Equipment Type. Things that describe a monitor's state or urgency — such as Critical — are usually better left uncategorized or handled with severities.
Creating a Category
Organization admins can create categories.
- Navigate to Tags in the sidebar
- Click Manage categories
- Click Create Category
- Configure the category:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | The dimension this category represents, such as Customer, Project, or Site |
| Description | Optional note on what belongs in this category |
| Color | A color for visual identification |
| Allow multiple tags per monitor | When on, a monitor can carry several tags from this category. When off, it can carry at most one |
Category names must be unique within your organization.
Assigning Tags to a Category
A tag belongs to at most one category. Open a tag from the Tags list and choose a category in the Category field, or leave it on Uncategorized.
Tag labels only have to be unique within their category. You can have a Line 3 under Site and a Line 3 under Project without a conflict.
Single-Select vs. Multi-Select
The Allow multiple tags per monitor switch decides how the tag picker behaves for that category:
- Multi-select (the default) — a monitor can carry any number of tags from the category. Use it for dimensions that genuinely stack, such as Equipment Type.
- Single-select — picking a tag from the category replaces whichever tag from that category was selected before, the way a radio button works. Use it for dimensions where exactly one answer is correct, such as Customer.
Filtering Across Dimensions
Categories change how the tag filter on the monitor, incident, and vulnerability lists combines your selection:
- Within one category, tags are combined with OR. Selecting
Line 3andLine 4from Site matches monitors on either line. - Across categories, they are combined with AND. Adding
Acmefrom Customer narrows that result to Acme's monitors on lines 3 or 4.
This is what makes several dimensions usable at once: each category you add narrows the result, while each extra tag inside a category widens it.
Guided Assignment
Both the tag filter and the tag picker on a monitor rank tags by what is already in use. As soon as you select a tag, every tag that appears on the same monitors moves to the top of its group with a count of matching monitors. Tags that never occur together drop below and dim — they stay clickable, so you can always broaden the selection.
In practice: pick Acme under Customer, and the Site group immediately shows the sites Acme actually has, ahead of the ones they don't.
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The counts also work with nothing selected — then each tag shows how many monitors carry it, which is a quick way to spot tags nobody uses anymore.
Editing and Deleting a Category
Organization admins can edit a category's name, description, color, and multi-select setting from its detail page.
Deleting a category does not delete its tags. The tags survive and become Uncategorized; the monitors they are assigned to keep them. Re-assign them to another category at any time.
WARNING
Deleting a category cannot be undone. Its tags lose their grouping and have to be re-assigned one by one.