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Ubidots Basics: Tags
Ubidots Basics: Tags

Subdivide your entities with tags to organize and filter them more easily.

Sergio M avatar
Written by Sergio M
Updated over a week ago

Ubidots has introduced tags, a new feature that improves resource management by broadening the way in which you can order entities. These tags can be added to devices, dashboards, reports, events, and users (Industrial plan, or higher, is required to add tags to users) to help classify and group them.

Tags are a way of labeling entities inside Ubidots with keywords or phrases that describe their characteristics or properties. By using tags, you can create custom groups of resources to:

  • Filter those entities based on their tags,

  • Make GET requests to our API to get information about tagged entities,

  • Or even define which entities each of your end users get to see and interact with on your app.

In this article, we'll go through how these tags work and how to create/use them.

Requirements

1. Understanding tags

You can add tags to devices, dashboards, reports, events, and users (learn more about this option in the next section) to easily navigate through a large amount of these resources by filtering them using the search bars in each of those entity's general view.

Tags are also useful when making GET requests to the Ubidots API, since you're able to request information only about, for example, the devices you've assigned certain tag to.

Note:

  • The maximum character limit for each tag is 50.

  • Ubidots allows up to 20 tags to be assigned to each user or entity.

2. Understanding tags for users

With an Industrial license, or higher, you can also add tags to your users. Beyond what we already explained in the previous point, adding tags to users gives you an extra layer of control over what end users get to see and interact with in your app.

Tags allow you to subdivide the resources of an organization that has many users with different needs and roles.

Let’s assume, just as an example, that you’ve assigned 2 of each of these entities to your organization:

  • Dashboards

  • Devices

  • Events

That organization also has 2 users assigned to it whose jobs are very different. Since you want them to focus only on their tasks and even prevent any of them from mistakenly damaging or changing these resources, you use tags like this:

The first tag, conveniently named “tag1”, is assigned to one of the dashboards, devices, events, and, finally, to the user in charge of them. Likewise, you’ll assign “tag2” to the remaining resources and the other user.

Now, once each of those users logs into your Ubidots app, they will only see and have access to the resources they share a tag with.

Note: To filter what your users can see in your app based on tags, you need to activate a flag in your Ubidots account by following these steps:

  1. Head to "Apps" in the main navbar.

  2. Edit your app by clicking on the pencil icon.

  3. Go to the "features" section located in the left sidebar menu.

  4. Click on the "other" option and activate the "Filter Devices, Events, Dashboard and Reports by user tags" button.

3. Adding tags to users

The best way to create tags is from the end user level, this will allow you to keep track of the created tags across the platform. Head to the “users” dropdown in the navigation bar, then click on “users” and select the user to be working on.

Next, you’ll see a section called “Tags” and here’s where you can enter the corresponding user’s tags:

4. Adding tags to devices

To add tags to your devices, head to the "devices" tab in the navigation bar, click on “devices” and select the device you wish to add tags to. In the device details, you will find the "tags" section where you can add new tags:

5. Adding tags to dashboards

To add tags to your dashboards, head to the "dashboards" page, click on the hamburger button at the upper left corner of the screen, click on the options button (the three dots) of the dashboard you want to add tags to, and click on “edit”. Once there, you’ll see the field to add tags in the second position of the settings.

6. Adding tags to events

To add tags to an event, click on the "data" tab in the navigation bar and go to “events”. Once there, go into the event you want to add tags to by clicking on its name. The field to add tags can be found in the “settings” tab of the event.

7. Adding tags to reports

To add tags to a report, click on the "data" tab in the navigation bar and go to “analytics”. Once there, choose the report you want to add tags to and click on the pencil icon to edit it. The field to add tags can be found in the “settings” tab of the report.

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