Collections & Tags
DocuShark gives you two ways to organize a growing library, and they answer different questions:
- Collections answer "where does this document live?" — each document sits in at most one collection, like a folder.
- Tags answer "what is this document about?" — a document can carry many tags, and search can target them directly.
Collections are containers for your documents — think of them as "workspaces inside your workspace." As your library grows, collections let you group related documents together, give each group a name and a colour, and find your way around at a glance.
The basics
- A document belongs to at most one collection at a time. A document that isn't in any collection simply shows up as Unassigned.
- Every collection has a name, an optional accent colour, and an order you control — so the groups that matter most can sit up top.
- Collections organise your library; they never change the documents inside them. Moving a document between collections (or removing it from one) leaves the document itself untouched.
Creating and managing collections
Open the document browser and switch the Group by control to Collection. From there you can:
- Create a collection — give it a name (and optionally pick a colour).
- Rename or recolour a collection from its header menu.
- Reorder collections so your most-used groups come first.
- Delete a collection — the documents inside it aren't deleted, they just return to Unassigned.
Adding a document to a collection
Open a document card's ⋯ (More actions) menu and pick Move to collection to drop it into a collection (or pull it back out to Unassigned). You can move several documents at once when you have multiple selected — the selection bar's Add to collection menu applies to everything selected.
Local vs. workspace collections
Collections carry a scope that matches the documents they hold:
| Scope | Holds | Lives | When you leave a workspace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local | Your local (personal) documents | On this device only | Kept — local collections are yours |
| Workspace | A connected workspace's documents | With the workspace | Dropped from this device |
A document and its collection must share scope — a local document can only join a local collection, and a workspace document can only join a workspace collection. This keeps personal organisation separate from a shared workspace's, and means signing out of a workspace never disturbs your local collections.
Tags
Tags are free-form labels that live on the document itself. Where a collection is a place, tags are properties — a document can have up to 20, and each tag gets a consistent colour everywhere it appears.
- Add tags from a document card's ⋯ (More actions) › Edit tags… — type and press Enter, or pick from tags you've used before. With several documents selected, the selection bar's Add tags applies tags to all of them at once.
- Search by tag: the search box matches names and tags. Prefix your query with
#(e.g.#research) to match tags only, and clicking any tag chip on a card fills that search in for you. Press/anywhere in the library to jump to the search box. - Tags travel with the document. Moving a document between personal and workspace storage keeps its tags, and a document restored from the Trash still has them. Collections behave differently — see below.
What transfers keep, and what they don't
| When you… | Collection | Tags |
|---|---|---|
| Move a personal document to a workspace | Cleared (arrives Unassigned) | Kept |
| Move a workspace document to personal | Cleared (arrives Unassigned) | Kept |
| Trash and restore a document | Cleared (returns Unassigned) | Kept |
A collection belongs to a place (this device, or a workspace), so a document that changes places always leaves its collection behind. Tags describe the document itself, so they follow it everywhere.
Where collections are headed
Today a collection groups documents. The longer-term vision is for a collection to also be the home for the assets a group of documents shares — think shared file/blob relations and shared style profiles that apply across every document in the collection. Those are on the roadmap; the grouping you use today is the foundation they build on.
See also
- Multi-Page Documents — organise within a single document.
- Embedded Files — the files that live alongside your canvas.
- Collaboration — sharing a workspace with a team.