Is it possible to create a tagging system with input via a form?

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I think the answer to this might be no (or maybe with a workaround)… but I’m new to non-excel based programming, so could very much be missing something.

Here’s what I am trying to do:

  1. We are trying to create a database of trends which our clients can access. These will be displayed as cards that our clients can click through.

  2. One of the features on each card will be a set of tags. The tags will be used to filter the trend cards, helping our clients find the most useful and relevant trends.

  3. The trend cards are populated from a table that is driven by a form. The form is how our team will input the information for each trend. It is an attempt to make this as easy as possible for our team members… who do not all love tables.

  4. Everything in the form is working with the exception of the “tag” entry. Ideally, I would like for team members to be able to input as many tags as they would like (ie, robot, AI, eldercare, demographic aging) in one spot on the form. This would then be used to filter the trend cards by tag name. So the two needs are:

  • submitting multiple “tags” in one line… that are associated with a specific trend
  • and then passing those tags into one master level Select List (basically a library of all the tags) that can be used to filter the trend cards… so the tag library gets updated each time a new trend is submitted.

I started with using a Select List for the tag entry on the form, but my team will need the option to create new tags through the form (potentially multiple at one time). For that reason, I’ve pivoted to making the tag entry a text field and have been experimenting with trying to parse a comma-separated text list and send it into a Select List. However, in the process, I either lose the association with the trend or I end up with a list of lists which contains duplicates (and is therefore useless for filtering the cards).

I have looked up dozens and dozens of community answers and tried lots of different things, but I think the conclusion I’ve come to is that you cannot input multiple text items from a form and use that in a select list in this way. Am I missing anything or thinking about this wrong? First time using Coda and would appreciate any advice or just pointing me in the right direction. I have been wrestling with this for over a week now, so any and all help I would be very grateful for.

Link to the page with the trend cards: https://coda.io/d/_d733pNRgTb6/AFI-Trend-Database_su3Vz

Link to the Form Results: https://coda.io/d/_d733pNRgTb6/Trend-Submission-Results_su8Yk

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hi @Heather_Benoit ,

it is an interesting question and my suggestion is maybe a bit different from what you had in mind and what others may suggest. It goes as follows

you create in your form as many fields for tags as you believe are reasonable, users use each field to fll in one tag (others may suggest to give in all tags seperated by a symbol like # in one field, but that is not what I have in mind) . In my example I have a form with 5 tag fields and I bring them together via a listcombine() in one column named allTags.

Next I create a button that transposes these values and add each one of them as a row to the tag table. This button is pressd by an automation when a form is submitted.

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the set up is a bit of work on your side, but for the users it is simple.

I hope it helps, cheers, christiaan

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hi @Christiaan_Huizer

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! Very interesting approach to the problem and one I had not considered. I will try it out today. Based on what you’ve shown here, I think this will work for us!

Thanks so much!

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I am curious how your transpose experience plays out, thanks for letting me know @Heather_Benoit

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