Understanding the Tagging Framework

A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with a piece of information such as a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip, and so on. In this way tags describe an item and enable keyword-based classification and searching. Tags are commonly used as means for users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages. The bookmarks can be viewed and searched chronologically, by category or tags, or using a search engine.

Tagging provides the means for PeopleSoft Interaction Hub and applications users to store, organize, search, and manage content bookmarks. It enables both publishers of content and consumers of that content to classify the material in a way that is meaningful to them. Significantly, users are able to share their tags or bookmarks with other users, thus benefitting the user community from the shared information--in this case tags. This increases the probability of properly characterizing the content and hence its discoverability and use. Tags are also a way to measure what particular topics are of relevance to the user community.

Tagging capability also provides for navigation to other content that is related through the same tags without the need to hard-code those connections.

Thus, tagging is both a means of classifying things and a way of creating ad hoc navigation paths among related items.

The PeopleSoft Interaction Hub tagging framework enables users to tag Portal content and search the Portal using tags. Tags appear in the search results of the Portal search page and also in the search pages for various PeopleSoft Interaction Hub features, such as Content Management, Discussion Forums, Workspaces, and so on. Users can also perform searches using tags. A search using tags returns all the content tagged for that tag.

Private tags are not searched and are not returned with search results. The exception is in the Tag Browser page the user's own private tags are returned with the search results when a search scope of All My Tags is selected.

A PeopleSoft Interaction Hub tag search page uses a database search. A user can immediately search for newly created tags because the tag search is not dependent on the indexes being refreshed. Search results are filtered based on the users security permissions before being displayed.

The exception is that on the Portal search page and the search pages for Portal features. After new tags are added, the corresponding index has to be rebuilt before a the new tags will be returned in a search on the Portal search page.

Tags on any page are hyperlinks to the tag browser page with default search results of the tag selected. For instance, clicking on a tag labeled Community in a managed content item redirects the user to the tag browser page with search results for Community displayed.