Many of you had expressed frustration with the long list of articles (and other content types in the Content Library). In order to help you organize those lists, we've added a feature that organizes the view of articles (and other content types) by tags. For example, in the Manage > Articles view, the first screen you see is a list of tags (including nontagged, for articles that are not assigned to a tag). (We've used a blog-like "tag cloud" format -- the tags with the most items assigned to it appears largest.) You will also see a link to the original view of the all article list.

Clicking on the name of a tag pulls up a list of articles assigned to that tag, thus providing a view of smaller groups of articles. (We used this method of organization because it worked with our existing system infrastructure of tags. We are also building a 'grid view' of content types, ie, view all articles in a spreadsheet-like view, with some fields sortable.

The importance of tagging:
Up until now, tagging was used only for creating dynamic lists. Now that we are using tags to organize content types, you may want to reconsider your tagging strategy. Here are ideas:

• Use key phrases that describe to the content on your site
• Think about subjects, topics, concepts, themes of content to choose key phrases
• One-word phrases are best; two word phrases will work(keep the phrases short!)
• Be specific and descriptive
• Think about terms you'd use to search for content.  (ie. What terms would you use to search for your site's content?)
• You may want to start with a list of tags that correlate with the names of your main nav sections and/or your Local's divisions, sectors, employers, or facilities

To create a set of tags, go to 'Configure > Content Tags' - You can also create tags on the fly when creating/editing content, under the Tags tab. Once you've created your tag structure, be sure to assign tags to articles and other content types. Use the 'Tags' tab in the Edit interface.

  Some ideas for basic tags:

• Names of Divisions/Sectors
• [Division] events (ie, State employee events)
• News
• Politics
• COPE
• Benefits
• Rights at work
• Join SEIU

These are just a few ideas to get you started with your site's tag strategy or structure.