Tags

Tags are one of the most useful features in Changeflow and they're easy to overlook. At their simplest, they help you organize sources into groups. But they also unlock some pretty powerful workflows once you start using them properly.

Organizing your sources

The obvious use for tags is keeping things tidy. When you're tracking dozens (or hundreds) of sources, scrolling through one long list gets old fast.

Tag your sources by topic, client, project, or whatever makes sense for how you work. Something like "competitors", "regulatory", "news", or "client-abc". Once you've tagged a few sources, those tags appear in your sidebar for quick access.

Click a tag in the sidebar and you'll see just the sources with that tag. Simple, but it makes a big difference when you're trying to find something specific.

Filtered feeds

Here's where tags get interesting. When you tag multiple sources with the same tag, you can get a combined feed of changes from all of them.

Say you've got 15 competitor websites you're tracking. Tag them all with "competitors" and you can view all competitor updates in one place.

To access a tag's feed:

  1. Hover over the tag in your sidebar
  2. Click the feed icon (the rightmost icon that appears)
  3. You'll see a list of recent updates from all sources with that tag
  4. Click the three dots at the top right of this page to get feed options

From that menu you can grab RSS, JSON, or CSV feed URLs to use externally. Subscribe in your RSS reader, import into a spreadsheet, or consume programmatically.

This works with any tag. Create a "high-priority" tag for the sources that matter most and subscribe to just that feed in Feedly or Inoreader. The rest of your sources still get tracked, but you're only getting pushed notifications for the important stuff.

Check out the Feeds documentation for more details on feed formats and filtering options.

Managing configuration across similar pages

This is probably the most powerful use of tags, and it's something most people don't think about.

Let's say you're tracking 40 product pages on Walmart - different products but they all have the same page layout. You want the AI to focus on "price changes, availability status, and seller changes" for all of them. Without tags, you'd type that prompt into each source individually. Tedious.

With tag defaults, you set it once on your "Walmart Products" tag and every source with that tag inherits those settings automatically. Add a new product page next week? Just apply the tag and it picks up all the configuration.

Same goes for manual area selection. If you've got a dozen job boards and they all have similar layouts, you can select the listings area once on the tag and be done with it.

See the Tag Defaults guide for the full details on how to configure this.

Tips for using tags effectively

Start simple - You don't need a complex tagging system. Start with 3-4 tags that match how you actually think about your sources. Add more as you need them.

Use multiple tags - Sources can have multiple tags. A source could be tagged both "competitors" and "high-priority" at the same time. This gives you flexibility in how you filter and organize things.

Think about your feeds - If you're going to subscribe to RSS feeds, plan your tags around what you want to see together. A "daily-review" tag might make sense even if the sources aren't otherwise related.

Don't over-tag - If you find yourself adding 5+ tags to every source, you've probably got too many. Keep it manageable.

Adding tags to a source

When creating or editing a source:

  1. Find the Tags field
  2. Type a tag name and press Enter
  3. Repeat for additional tags
  4. Tags are saved when you create or update the source

Changeflow remembers your existing tags and will suggest them as you type. You can also create new tags on the fly - just type the name and hit Enter.