Optimize your Notion productivity: Global Tags Database | Advanced Tutorial

Global tags in Notion.
How I missed those from Evernote.
So... I made them.
Using a Tags database and putting all of your tags in it (instead of select columns) allows you to reference this database and add your tags anywhere.
This can help you connect every part of your Notion workspace together and make it easier to navigate.
With some practice and organization, you'll be able to jump from any item to any other item using just your tags.
We're also leveraging the brand-new sub-items functionality to make sure our tags are both easy to use and look pretty (Notion should look pretty!).
Enjoy!
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#Notion, #productivity, #organizationaltips, #tagging, #workflow, #timemanagement
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Jordan

[@heyJordanParker]

The top ideas from the best books, podcasts, and studies. Simplified. In your inbox every Sunday. Try it here 👉 geni.us/JPNewsletter

[@antonkaufmann9848]

Jordan, thank you for the great solution of how to introduce Global Tags, Parent Tag and Child Tags to Notion. Could you create another KZbin video of how to use your Global Tag solution to create a great Knowledge Base, please?

[@thepokerparadox]

The problem I'm encountering is that if I filter any table by "Parent Tag" it's not populating the results of the child tags, unless those specific projects had both the child tag and parent tag noted. Also when I look at notes in the parent tag database, it does not contain notes for the child tags. It seems like the primary benefit of going through all of this would be so that the child tags can be aggregated within the parent tag. So if I have facebook, twitter, linkedin - as child tags, and "social media" as parent tag. Then when I filter a table for "social media", ideally it would show all facebook twitter linkedin etc. Additionally, if looking at the database file for "twitter" it should contain notes just for twitter, but if looking at the database file for "social media" it should contain the notes for all. Is this even possible? That's the main thing I'm hoping to achieve.

[@BobBarley420]

I would love to know this as this is how tags should actually work

[@YellowMilk14]

That 'KZbin' tag being both the parent and the child reminds me of Fry in that episode of futurama where he is his own grandpa 😂

[@heyJordanParker]

Kinda yeah 😂

[@sturdyboneswoodworking]

Thanks for explaining all this. One friendly feedback is to slow down a bit and say what you're clicking when taking actions. I'm new to notion and had to constantly pause and run the video back just to know what you were doing to get certain menus pulled up etc. Thanks again.

[@heyJordanParker]

Good tip. Actually just in time, because I'll be making a beginner series for Notion. Anything confusing you should cover?

[@joey_williams]

Exactly what I needed. Thanks, Jordan. And thanks again for helping with that Notion Shortcut in your community a while back!

[@sasazezelic]

Perfect, that's exactly what I needed! Thanks for the idea, and for the video.

[@heyJordanParker]

Glad it helped!

[@shelper]

well, is there a way to make the tag inherent works? say if i add a child tag to a note, the note will also show up when filtered using parent tag

[@cullly]

Thanks for this video. I was already doing this, but didn't know how to sub-group and this made everything so much neater. Also, I love the Bulbasaur Cap!

[@heyJordanParker]

Glad it helped! ❤️ Bulbasaur

[@cullly]

@@heyJordanParker It helped a lot. I'm building my 'second' brain and I am really fussy, but this solved my problem. RE: Bulbasaur. I'm an old fart (45) and Bulbasaur was always my favourite in the cartoons because he was like a little puppy, but the others were too intent on fighting or being amazing. Bulbasaur mostly wanted to be Ash's friend. So, Bulbasaur was always my favourite. About 25 years ago. I went on a 1 day vacation from Ireland to Wales where we spent the day in a little theme park called Oakwood. It was small, but the first one I've ever been to as an adult. It was a lot of fun, but the highlight of the trip was me spending a few pounds trying to burst little balloons with darts. I am usually useless at these, but for some reason I won. Looking around to see what prize I could get, I saw a Bulbasaur and it made my year. I still have him today in my bedroom. He's about 50cm (20inch) wide and tall. He's still in perfect condition and still my favourite Pokemon. It's rare to see people with anything Bulba. It's always Pikachu, Charmandar, or Squirtle. I'm glad to see Bulba getting some love

[@Mark4Jesus]

You rock, dude! I appreciate this video! The method seems about the best of what I've seen for people trying to work-around Notion not having hierarchical tags or folders. I am trying this next. I even enjoyed your psychotic interludes. sub++

[@heyJordanParker]

Glad it is useful Mark! The psychotic interludes just happen; haven’t you had this happen to you: 1/ You’re relaxing at home 2/ Thinking about going for a walk with the dog maybe 3/ BAM psychotic interlude Or is that just me? 😆 PS: here to help as you play with this!

[@heyJordanParker]

Most of what I mostly use, currently, is on layers 2 and 3, but there are a few items that are 5-6 layers down. As a rule of thumb: 1/ Everything that you want to visually find should be in the first 2 layers 2/ Everything that you’ll search for or is specialized can be wherever

[@Mark4Jesus]

Of course, replaying some instructions super slow over and over again was kind of a drag. 😉

[@Mark4Jesus]

@@heyJordanParker I live in an area where this time of year it's raining like 95% of the time, so I have to look at my weather all the time to schedule when I'm going to walk the dogs (some days there's not even a window of opportunity there)... but that's their entire life... and it's almost my only exercise. :D So after watching this and thinking more, I realize that I'm going to be connecting (by "Relation") this same tag system (I'm just going to call my Global Tag DB "Folders" instead) for almost every other type of DB (for me that's: Links, Studies, Projects, Health, Class Notes, Supplies & Shopping, Recipes, Taxes, etc). So each of those DBs could now have a view with "Organize" or "Sort" by Folder (global tag reference)... Not sure if I'll be able to have a separate hierarchical browse tree view for each other DB but that would be super slick! Thx again!

[@CloudTalesVideos]

Game changing for my bookmarks and consumed content databases. Thank you.

[@heyJordanParker]

Fantastic to hear that!

[@heyJordanParker]

(My pleasure haha)

[@ArchEnemyWagesofSin]

Love it, thanks!

[@heyJordanParker]

Happy to share!

[@LauraNunez]

Hi Thanks! is it possible to automate that when I click on 'Done' the next person who is in the task next, can see it or is tagged automatically?

[@heyJordanParker]

Builtin with just Notion - not just yet. Using a no-code automation tool (like Zapier, Make, or Coda) - it can be done. More complicated though; email me if you need help! (in the channel description)

[@luabranka]

Hey J thank you for the video! I encounter an issue which is once i want to add a tag to something all the tags are mixed and its difficult to find the tag i am looking for. i was wonering if there is any way to sort the categories in alphabet way?

[@heyJordanParker]

Yes and no. (Likely no for your case though 💁‍♂️) Inside database views you can use the "Sort" option and sort to your heart's content. But in the property picker, you can't do anything. Notion doesn't support it. (Even though I asked several times xD) My hack is to keep the table open in a new tab, search there, and then type in the name in the property viewer.

[@brightraphael_]

This is gold Jordan 🔥🔥🔥

[@heyJordanParker]

Thanks Bright, glad it was useful!

[@brightraphael_]

@@heyJordanParker Yes, man. Especially for someone like me trying to get the hang of using notion.

[@nvp19892003]

Thank you for the video, I truly enjoy the concept of child tags, most tutorial only introduce tags but not grouping them. One caveat though, I have to click on dropdown menu arrow in each parent tag to see child tags, which is very annoying if you have dozens of them. Is there anyway that all the dropdown menu are opened as soon as I open the Global Tags page?

[@LC0106]

Thanks Jordan for sharing this creative tips! Do I understand correctly that the parent-child relationship is for display only at the Global Tag view. So in table view, if I tag a note as "KZbin", and I filter to show notes with Boss tag, this note won't show. This is what I get after following your instruction. I am not sure if I miss out any steps. Again, thanks for sharing.

[@heyJordanParker]

You’re right - if you filter by boss tag, you won’t get the child tag working. Here’s an imperfect workaround to that: 1. Create a rollup property in the table you’d like to filter - pick the tag in the first box (field to roll up) & the parent tag in the second (property). 2. Create an OR filter - filter when tag matches OR when a tag in the rollup of parent tags matches. This will fail with 3 levels of nesting. Example: Games -> Path of Exile ✅ filtering by “Games” will find the parent tag “Games” and you’ll be good. Games -> ARPGs -> Path of Exile 🚫 filtering by games will find the parent tag “ARPGs” and won’t work Does that make senese?

[@riderfish]

it's 2024 and Notion still not implements (and dose not want to) the global tag idea, thanks for Jordan for sharing this

[@heyJordanParker]

It's a pleasure. I'm annoyed it's not easier - takes a whole lot of time to set up anything new!

[@jenschristiannrgaard4878]

Fantastic work!! Is there a way to upload in bulk that is easy to do? I have a spreadsheet with the overview e.g. (Musical Genre->Electronic Music->House music)

[@heyJordanParker]

Thanks! Yes, go to Settings → Import and you will be able to bulk import.

[@rosaclark9661]

Helpful. Thank you. When you added the related Global tags on the new page (7m20sec), why didn't you also relate the child tag? What am I missing?

[@heyJordanParker]

Glad it's helpful! The child tags are there to organize your tags more easily -> meaning you don't add them to other pages and use them in the tags database only. (or, you know, add them to every page and go crazy - whatever you feel like xD)

[@vallentin7233]

Great stuff. I implemented it in my Notion Setup, but slowly the amount of Tags are increasing. I have many Databases where I use the Global Tags and in every Database I can see every single Tag. For the Databases however only some Tags of a specific ParentTag are necessary/important. Is there a way to only let the ChildTags of a specific ParentTag be visible to choose from in a Database?

[@heyJordanParker]

Not yet, but I've shared that with Notion. It is necessary to filter those for quite a few usecases!

[@remmaria]

Great!! But how can I use these global tags to organize different pages (and pages inside pages)? I need to put them all in a table too?

[@heyJordanParker]

Yes you can! Also yes, they need to be in a database. But nothing else should actually change.

[@remmaria]

@@heyJordanParker thank you!! I'll try =)

[@toxicallehhighlights658]

Hi! Im trying to understand also how you made the "status" row in your notion page you are showing in the tutorial. Is it something you would share or not? :) Love the database otherwise :D Perfect video

[@heyJordanParker]

Glad it's working for you! I have two fields that show up in that Status field. Child Topics and Related Topics. The formula looks like this (nothing fancy here): " 📝 ➥ " + format(prop("Child Topics Count")) + " | 📝 ➧ " + format(prop("Related Topics Count"))

[@grantnelson7717]

Jordan, thanks so much for solving my struggle to figure this out... I too come from Evernote, so you understand my frustration with parts of Notion (but I love it potential to be my one place for task and knowledge management!). Keep up the good work. PS: I love your style, but I found it hard to understand your side comments since your voice was lower and less clear to me.

[@heyJordanParker]

Thanks, Grant, glad this was useful! And thank you for the feedback, I’ll try to improve the audio there (working on the voice, but that’s a bit slower 😅). Much appreciated ❤️

[@RobChristian-qp6ui]

Why is it that I don't have a blue "New" button in the top right corner? UPDATE: I figured it out. I had to first pick a datasource. I imported all of my Evernote notes and for me, this datasource was one of my Evernote Notebooks.

[@heyJordanParker]

Fantastic job dealing with that, Rob! Here to help if anything else pops up ❤️

[@eclipsenow5431]

But the one thing I don't get is how does this help search faster? If would love to see a finished version in action to compare whether or not I want to invest in this system or another. Like, I have all sorts of Environmental and political blogging. Like - why not just have 2 normal tags columns - 1 with Subject and another with Child issues of subject? EG: Search for "renewables" and then in the issues - "Cost". Doesn't that immediately do pretty much the same thing?

[@heyJordanParker]

If you store everything you care about in one, single database - yes, 100%. You can use local tags and call it a day. (It's easier and simpler.) But if you have a bigger setup and need to reference more things - no, with local tags you'll end up with multiple copies and incorrectly connected information. This is where global tags shine.

[@eclipsenow5431]

@@heyJordanParker Thank you so much! You've just added the last bit of information I needed to decide something. I've decided I only like databases for one thing - storing my Notes. I tend to think very "Geographically" in Old fashioned Directory Trees. That's old PC folders within folders - much like the Global Tags system you've developed. See I'm an Eco-Blogger - and debate environmental doomers. I need 20 specific articles on Solar power ready to copy and paste - all tweaked around the common objections but for different audiences. But if I just had normal folders within folders EG: Solar power / Common Objections / Storage costs too much / Overbuild renewables first to reduce storage / Storage types / Off-river pumped hydro.... that would be so many clicks. Boss page, Parent Page, Child page, grand-child, great-grandchild - aaayyeeayyyeeayyyye! Then WHAT IF I ACCIDENTALLY DELETE A PARENT PAGE OR CHILD PAGE? I'd lose all the pages stored within it! NOT good for security! But I HATE LOOKING at a Database! They're so ugly! Also, searching for stuff almost feels like a lucky dip! Finding the right Solar article (for example - there are SO many other subjects as well) tweaked for the right objections and audience is actually HARD TO RECOGNISE just in a database field. So instead -I'm going to STORE everything in databases - but then DISPLAY all my pages on beautifully wide Master / boss pages for each subject. These can have over 100 pages linked to these Master pages 3 or 4 columns wide. Different areas and colour themes on the Master Page can be for different audiences / objection types. I can also use Synced Blocks as Navigation Bars to jump between the different Master pages once in Notion - and I can link to the top 20 Master pages in my Browser/s just to get there even faster! Less clicks, more attractive, and communicating faster to my rather visual brain. One Browser bookmark gets to say 50 - 100 linked articles - so with maybe 20 Browser pages bookmarked, that could be 1000 to 2000 notes - without even LOOKING at the database! I might use Thomas Frank's free database because it has recent notes etc - but never really use the other features! It's all about the big beautiful pages - just enter the note into the database - and then immediately link to it from the appropriate Master page. Done!

[@user-bv6lj2lf7q]

Thanks for the video! Is there a way that I can choose from the parents tag in one column of the table view, and then in another column, to choose from the child tags, that relate to the relevant parent that I choose in the first column. thank a lot for your brilliant work!

[@heyJordanParker]

Absolutely possible, but it would require digging into the JSON code to figure out. I'm sure if you dig into the Notion API documentation and get (a bit) of help from ChatGPT, you can get it working!

[@user-bv6lj2lf7q]

@@heyJordanParker 🙏

[@marziamode3727]

@@heyJordanParker can you make a video on this please?

[@benlakos8994]

This is super useful, and is SO CLOSE to being a perfect solution. The big stumbling block I'm coming up against is that views/filters don't seem to work (actually they work inconsistently, and I'm not sure why). For example say within my Global Tags structure I have a 'social media' parent tag and nested under that tags for Twitter, Instagram etc. The 'parent tag' column against those tags shows 'social media' as the/a parent tag as you would expect, yet if I apply a filter 'Parent tag= social media', I get no results (same result for ANY parent tag filter I try). Occasionally I get a correct result when trying the same thing with the 'Child Tag' filter, but it's inconsistent and I have no idea why, and in any case what I really want is to be able to filter by Parent tag.

[@benlakos8994]

The above views I was trying was using the Table layout. It turns out that if I change to List or Gallery layout, everything works as expected. Not sure why that should change things, but at least I got a result and hopefully this will help others with similar issues.

[@heyJordanParker]

Oh wow, I was sceptic at first because I’ve filtered so much, but you’re right! You’re doing perfectly and this is 100% a bug in Notion. I will report that! PS: One workaround you can use is to create a second database view without subitems. Filtering will work there (that’s why it works in the other views - they don’t even have subitems). PS2: I actually use the first workaround in a Tag template - every tag I create shows child tags in a filtered database when I open it. I never noticed this gap in functionality because I’m so used to looking there.

[@tyronebrown1828]

Great video thanks, only feedback is some critical parts were sped up too fast so it required some pausing frame by frame to catch some of the selected items.

[@heyJordanParker]

Yeah, tough edit that one. I have a few things I'll do better next time.

[@XeiDaMoKaFE]

Why do people keep calling it tags , those are called pages , which is text , not tags , I need the new database to have the tags of the master as headers , notion Can't do this ?

[@heyJordanParker]

They are pages serving the purpose of tags. And no, you can't have a database have properties from another database as headers. Not yet at least.

[@XeiDaMoKaFE]

@@heyJordanParker I can see that , we also Can't show values , only text

[@Agitated_Hamster]

So fast....😅

[@heyJordanParker]

And that was me going slow (I even did several retakes to go slow)! Try @Thomasfrank's channel - he might be closer to what will work for you ❤️

[@Agitated_Hamster]

@@heyJordanParker lol, it was funny. I'm used to pausing videos. 😆

[@StephenRayner]

The edits don't help. Baby pictures / sounds and random beeps from a network grid... This is an improved productivity video.... And you are distracting your viewer.

[@heyJordanParker]

It's unfortunate it doesn't work for you, Stephen! This is definitely not your place to learn those things then - this one was rather lightweight on the editing.

[@kaymann8007]

IDK. Should I be listening to a grown man in a pokemon hat?

[@dianaelenkova]

idk. Should I read a comment from a judgmental stranger. just did