Organize tags into hierarchies

Tags work best when they reflect how your team actually thinks about conversations. A flat list of 80 tags is hard to navigate; a 2-level tree of 80 tags is easy.

Before you start

• Admin permissions on Tag Management
• A rough sense of your top-level categories — usually 5–12 root Topic tags is the sweet spot

Re-parent an existing tag

1. Open Settings → Tag Management.
2. Find the tag in the tree.
3. Open the tag’s edit panel and change the Parent field to the new parent (or clear it to make the tag a root).
4. Save. The tag and all its descendants move with it.

Existing conversations tagged with this tag are not retroactively re-tagged with the new parent — the tag itself just lives in a different place in the tree. Reporting and filters update immediately.

Rename a tag (inline)

1. Click the tag’s name directly in the tree. The name becomes editable in place.
2. Type the new name. Atender tracks edit sessions so two admins can’t overwrite each other’s changes accidentally.
3. Press Enter or click outside to save.

The rename propagates to every conversation, automation rule, and report that referenced the tag. There’s no broken reference to clean up — the tag is the same record, just with a new label.

Promote a tag to a root

Same as re-parenting: open the tag, clear the Parent field, save. If the tag was a Topic sub-tag, it stays Topic when promoted.

Demote a root tag to a sub-tag

Same flow: edit the tag, set a Parent, save. Children of the demoted tag stay attached — the whole branch moves down a level. The demoted tag’s type setting is overridden by the new parent’s type.

Verify it worked

Reload Tag Management. The tree should reflect the new structure. Spot-check a recent conversation that had the tag — the tag should still be there with its new label / new parent.

Practical taxonomy tips

• Cap depth at 3 levels. Beyond that, the tree becomes hard for agents to navigate during tagging.
• Use Quick Add for bulk setup, not one-at-a-time creation. See Create a tag.
• Topic tags should describe the customer’s situation, not your internal process. Refund is a topic; Goes-to-finance-team is a workflow concern that belongs in routing or automation, not a tag.
• Metadata tags should describe state. Things that turn on and off, things that need attention.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: I re-parented a tag but old conversations still show it under the old parent. Fix: Conversations don’t store the parent path — they store only the tag itself. Reload the conversation; the breadcrumb in the tag chip should reflect the new parent.

• Symptom: I can’t drag a tag to a new parent. Fix: Atender’s Tag Management uses inline edit, not drag-and-drop. Open the tag’s edit panel and change the Parent field there.

See also

• Create a tag
• Topic vs Metadata reference