On this page: Learn how to organize journeys with tags and tag categories so you can classify, filter, and find your journeys more easily than with naming conventions.
As a Journey Optimizer practitioner, you can organize your journeys using tags. Tags are a quick and easy way of classifying objects to improve search.
Tags vs. naming conventions tags-vs-naming
Teams often rely on complex naming conventions to store metadata directly in journey names — for example: Lifecycle Marketing – Education – Customer Onboarding V2 – App Education – Q3 2025. While well-intentioned, this approach has a key weakness: as work scales across team members, the convention is rarely applied consistently, and journey lists become hard to navigate.
Tag categories in Journey Optimizer offer a better alternative. Instead of encoding metadata in the name, you attach categorized tags to each journey (e.g. team, objective, phase, quarter) and use filters to locate them. Journey names can then focus on what actually matters: the customer milestone being driven.
Benefits of tag categories over naming conventions:
- Consistency — tags are selected from a controlled list, not typed freely.
- Filterability — any combination of tag values can be used to slice the journey list instantly.
- Clarity — journey names stay short and milestone-focused.
- Scalability — adding a new metadata dimension means creating a new tag category, not rewriting a naming convention.
For a recommended setup workflow, see Set up tag categories for journey management below.
Add tags to a journey
The Tags field, in the journey properties, allows you to define tags for your journey. You can either select an existing tag, or create a new one. Start typing the name of the desired tag and select it from the list. If it is not available, click Create to create a new one and add it to your journey. You can define as many tags as needed.
The list of tags defined is displayed below the Tags field.
Filter on tags
The Journey list displays a dedicated column so you can easily visualize your tags.
A filter is also available to only display journeys with certain tags.
You can add or remove tags from any type of journey (live, draft, etc). Click the More actions icon next to the journey, and select Edit tags.
Manage tags
Administrators can delete tags and organize them by categories using the Tags menu, under ADMINISTRATION. Refer to this documentation.
Set up tag categories for journey management tags-setup
Follow these steps to replace a complex naming convention with a tag-based approach across your team.
Step 1 — Create tag categories (Admin)
In Administration > Tags, create one category for each metadata attribute your team currently encodes in journey names — for example: Team, Marketing objective, Campaign, Phase, Quarter.
Step 2 — Populate each category with tag values (Admin)
Within each category, create the tags that represent all possible values. For example, the Phase category might contain: Awareness, Onboarding, Retention, Win-back.
Step 3 — Apply tags when creating journeys (Practitioners)
Each time a new journey is created, select the appropriate tag from each category in the journey properties. A journey will typically carry one tag per category.
Step 4 — Name journeys for the milestone, filter by tags
Keep the journey name focused on the customer milestone it drives (e.g. First loyalty transaction). Use tag filters in the journey list to locate journeys by any combination of metadata — without relying on name parsing.
This section contains structured knowledge intended to support interpretation, retrieval, and question answering related to this topic.
For complete understanding, this information should be combined with the documentation on this page. Neither source is intended to stand alone; the page describes the feature, while this section provides additional context that helps disambiguate terminology, intent, applicability, and constraints.
- TL;DR: This page explains how to add, filter, and manage tags on journeys in Adobe Journey Optimizer, and why tag categories are a better alternative to complex naming conventions for organising large journey lists.
Intents:
- Add tags to a journey from the journey properties Tags field
- Filter the journey list by one or more tags to locate specific journeys quickly
- Edit tags on existing journeys of any status (live, draft, etc.) via More actions
- Create and organise tag categories as an administrator to enforce consistent metadata
- Replace a complex journey naming convention with a structured tag-based approach
Glossary:
- Tags: Labels attached to journeys to classify and filter them; case-insensitive and preserved when a journey is duplicated or versioned (product-specific)
- Tag categories: Groupings of related tag values created by administrators under Administration > Tags, enabling structured metadata classification (product-specific)
- Uncategorized category: The built-in default category to which tags created directly in journeys are automatically assigned (product-specific)
Guardrails:
- Tags are case-insensitive
- Tags defined in journeys are automatically added to the built-in “Uncategorized” category unless an administrator assigns them to a named category
- Only administrators can delete tags and manage tag categories via the Administration > Tags menu
- Tags are preserved when a journey is duplicated or a new version is created
Terminology:
- Canonical name: Tags — Acronym: none — variants: journey tags, administrative tags
- Canonical name: Tag categories — Acronym: none — variants: tag groups
- Do not confuse: “Tags” (journey classification labels) ≠ “naming conventions” (metadata encoded directly in journey names)
FAQ:
- Q: How do I add a tag to a journey? — In the journey properties, type the tag name in the Tags field and select it from the list, or click Create to add a new tag.
- Q: Can I add tags to a live journey? — Yes. Click the More actions icon next to the journey in the list and select Edit tags to add or remove tags on any journey regardless of status.
- Q: Are tags case-sensitive? — No. Tags are case-insensitive.
- Q: What happens to tags when I duplicate a journey or create a new version? — Tags are preserved on the duplicate or new version.
- Q: Who can delete tags or create tag categories? — Only administrators can delete tags and manage tag categories via the Administration > Tags menu.
- Q: Why use tag categories instead of naming conventions? — Tag categories enforce consistency through a controlled list, allow instant multi-dimensional filtering, keep journey names short and milestone-focused, and scale easily by adding new categories without rewriting naming rules.