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TagAndFacet Help
TagAndFacet
User’s Manual
Version 0.2.
24 January 2007
Introduction.
This user’s manual does correspond to the Beta release of TagAndFacet. The beta release contains most of the features of the phase1 release. The beta version is limited to 100 items, an item being a file, an URL, or an email. There is no limitation in terms of functionality and none in terms of number of tags used.
TagAndFacet is a tool enabling users to the associate keywords to a set of files, emails or URL. Helping them to find it back more easily afterwards.
TagAndFacet does requires .NET framework version 2.0 from Microsoft. This can be downloaded from Microsoft website through this link : Net Framework
Concepts
What is a tag?
A tag is a keyword, a label, a subject, a notion associated to a piece of information, in the beta release this piece of information is a file, it will be later on an email or an URL. This concept is used within several web sites(gmail, http://del.icio.us/, …).
Within wikipedia you will find a more accurate definition of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_%28metadata%29
Here is an extract :
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A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to. Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by the author/creator of the item — i.e. not usually as part of some formally defined classification scheme. Tags are typically used in dynamic, flexible, automatically generated internet taxonomies for online resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock). For this reason, "tagging" has become associated with the Web 2.0 buzz. Typically, an item will have one or more "tags" associated with it, as part of some classification software or system. The software will provide links to other items that share that keyword tag, or even to specified collections of tags. This allows for multiple "browse-able paths" through the items which can quickly and easily be altered by the collection's administrator, with minimal effort and planning. |
Usually, we are limited to the directory structure offered by the file system. But it offers only one way of organizing items. You can choose to use a folder on week or monthly basis, or create folders by project/customers. But you can’t mix both ways. With tags, you can associate to an item the customer name, project name, contact names,… as many tags as you would like to, to help you afterwards find the items based on these tags values.
The tool is also introducing the notion of facet, though it is not mandatory to use it, it helps to structure the keywords for large number of pieces of information.
What is facet?
A facet is a specific category you associate with a tag, some sample might be more clear than theoretical explanation about facet It can be seen also as a different aspect of the information your are tagging.
Because every piece of information might have different perspective which can be illustrated by different tags; it is even better to qualify these perspective by defining them through a facet and linking the tag to it.
Example:
I have got a file called invoice2006001.doc which is my first invoice of the year 2006 on my C: drive.
I could associate the tags: facture, 2006, 001 as well as the customer name …as simple tags, it would work without problem.
But if I want to make it more precise and improves the search pertinence.
I would also associate a facet: facture, Year:2006, Id:001 , CustomerName:WorldCompany
In this case, I explicitly indicates that 2006 is a tag with a specific facet which is the Year, and WorldCompany is a customer name. So if I want to search for all documents linked to a specific customer name I can use the facet CustomerName to find them back.
Another example of potential facet is the ISBN for books, Author,…
A Facet has got a data type associated to it. String being the default, you can also defined facet which is of the integer types or date type. It enables search to be done on intervals taking into account these intervals.
Here is an extract of the Wikipedia definition of facet:
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A faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, allowing searching and browsing of related information through several classes. Elements may include subject, geographical, temporal and form of an item. In a faceted classification, subjects are divided into facets (aspects), and class numbers are synthesised from the classifications. Analytico-synthetic method is much more powerful than more traditional hierarchical enumerative schemes such as the Library of Congress classification, Dewey Decimal Classification or Chinese Library Classification, but can result in much longer class numbers. It has been a major theoretical influence to classification researchers. The Colon classification developed by S. R. Ranganathan and the Universal Decimal Classification are the two most prominent examples of faceted classification in the physical world, where for many years this approach to classification was thought of as something complicated, difficult to understand and exotic. The rules for generating class numbers are a key part of this complication, but they are necessary to make sure each item gets its proper spot on the bookshelf. In the online world, faceted classification becomes much more useful because it is not bound by this constraint. It makes information access useful, by providing multiple navigational paths to any one item of information. For instance, a restaurant guide can classify a restaurant by location, price, rating, awards, ambience, and amenities. A user can navigate through any of these facets, combining them in any way to reach exactly the desired restaurant. In contrast to a folksonomy, the information in each of the facets can be organized into a hierarchy (for instance, the location facet could be divided by state, then cities, then neighborhoods). |
If you did not get it form the first time, don't worry I did not either :-). Check out the examples.
You can find the complete definition of facet within wikipedia again : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification
TagAndFacet is not yet another search Engine
On the market, you have plenty of search engines helping you to find back documents, pictures, anything stored on your PC. The technology used implies reading the content of your documents are building indexes based on this information, to make a long story short.
TagAndFacet is not reading your documents, nor your emails, it is storing only the tags you decide to associate to these pieces of information. It is entirely based on your active step of organizing this information by associating tags to it. The more you use, the more you will gain from it.
How to Tag a file
We have tried to make it easy and simple to use.
Within windows explorer, you have got an new contextual menu item available called Tagit
Select one or multiple files or folders, right click on the mouse button and choose the tagit menu item.
You will obtain a tagit screen:
When typing in your tags, TagAndFacet will propose you to complete automatically by choosing within the list of proposed tags. This functionality has two purposes, the first one to help you entering easily more and more tags, second to ensure coherence between the tags used in a long term.
You can switch to standard mode, by clicking on the standard mode button. You will find out more efficient to use the expert mode after some time, that’s why we choose the expert mode as being the default interface.
In this example, we have associated 4 tags, to the file and two facets for specific tags.
Click on the OK button to save your tags.
We do offer also auto completion based on the tags you have already used. It has two objectives help you to add quickly new tags and improves consistency in tagging keywords used across files, email or urls.
The application will inform you that facet Id does not exist and will propose you to define it.
In this case, we are defining the Id facet as an integer and give a short description to it.
If you want to see the tags associated to specific files you can right click on the file choose tagit menu item and you will se at the bottom on the window the list of tags already associated to the file:
Supported characters in a tag
a) A-Z, a-z
b) 0-9
c) Single spaces
d) ~, !@#$^&_
How to Tag an email
TagAndFacet is also an outlook plugin , it enables you to tag your emails in the very same way you are tagging your files. It enables you to find base on the keywords both emails and files.
You select the email you would like to tag and click on the right mouse button:
How to Tag an URL
TagAndFacet is also integrated to Microsoft Internet ExplorerWithin internet explorer you will find a new button
Depending of the internet explorer configuration you might have to click at the end of the toolbar to move the button back at the beginning
How to search
Searching is easy as well, click on the bottom right icon of TagAndFacet, in the window toolbar at the bottom of your screen
You will obtain a search panel as follows
In our example we could search for Offer, and you will see below that we find back the only offer document we have tagged. You can double click on the document to directly open it.
Another example is to search on the identification of the offer 546 in our case, and you will find the valuation document on top of the offer itself.
In the search panel, we offer the same auto completion feature as we do for the tagging service. It helps you to type keyword faster and correctly.
The equivalent in advanced mode is the following:
Within the results panels you can differentiate emails, files or url though the icon. By double clicking on the element you will get the email, file opened automatically.
On each element, you have access through the right mouse button click to a contextual menu depending of the type of document:
For an Url
for an email
for a file
Type in the search for panel the list of keywords you are looking for. You can switch to a standard mode which helps to build combines criteria like
You can compose search criteria using the title of the item, being for a file the actual file name, for an email the subject and for an URL the URL itself.
You can use within all research fields wildcards characters for example '%' if you know the you have used a tag starting with 'World' you can use World% to show all the documents having a tag starting with World.
You can also use the '%' character at the beginning of a keyword, for example if you know that the tag is ending with 'Company' you can search for %Company.
The search result panel is limited to 200 items as it is not easy anymore to find the item you are looking for. You can always refine your search to limit the result set.
You can of course compose these two, if you remember part of the tag only like 'Comp'. You cans reach for '%Comp%' and you will get all the items having a tag containing 'Comp'.
You can use wild characters within the titles field as well.
The date’s fields are based on the last modified date for a file. The received date for an email and the tagging date for an URL.
Note that the search is not case sensitive.
I8n
The application is mainly supported in English, but we do support translation as well. French is on his way. If you are willing to help us integrate a new language in the user’s interface, let us know at the following email address: (info@skelia.com)
Another level of i8n is that tags and facets can be defined in any character set you would like to. So if you are willing to used Cyrillic, Greek, French… characters to tag your files, please do so, we do support Unicode.
Platforms
The application has been tested on Windows XP only.
License
TagAndFacet is a commercial product. All intellectual properties are owned by Skelia sprl.
Commercial
TagAndFacet is a commercial software. The Beta version is free. There is no limitation on the number of tags used. But we have limited the number of items which can be tagged.We do not collect any information of the end user activity with the tool. We will not publish any advertsiement on the front end tool.
The commercial offer for the phase 1 release will be the following.
1) A limited version of the application will be free. All functionnalities will be available but only a limited number of items can be tagged.
2) An unlimited version of the application can be purchased. As the name say it, it has no limitation on the numbers of tags used niethre the number of items tagges. It is linked to the machine your are using.
No Spyware included, No Malware included, No adware.
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