{"id":14568,"date":"2026-09-02T07:48:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elementapp.ai\/blog\/?p=14568"},"modified":"2026-09-02T07:48:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:48:37","slug":"fields-and-tags-in-element","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elementapp.ai\/blog\/fields-and-tags-in-element\/","title":{"rendered":"Fields and tags in Element: a system that fits a small firm and an international one"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Fields and tags in Element: a system that fits a small firm and an international one<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Element got a new screen a few days ago, called Fields and tags, and the shortest way to describe it is this: you get a set of building blocks and you assemble a system that fits your own company. As many fields as you need on projects and on candidates, tags that you pin not only to a project and to a candidate but also to a user account, and a switch that turns a tag group into a rule about who sees what. The same set of blocks gives you a tool for a three-person agency in one city, and a split of one database between countries in a company that recruits in several markets at once.<\/p>\n

Before the examples, one reassurance for anyone who already has their fields in order. All of them still work, the values saved in them stayed where they were, filters built on them return the same results as before, and job ads publish without any change. What moved is the place where you configure all this, which is now Settings, then Project management, then Fields and tags, and what is new is that a second kind of description now stands next to fields. Tags are color-coded labels you can see on the lists and on the recruitment board without opening a record. In the July roundup of changes<\/a> I wrote about the field configurator and column management, and this is where that thread continues.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Three blocks and what each one does<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The first block is fields. You add as many as you need, separately for projects and for candidates, in six types: scale, date, open text, days of the week, and two kinds of value lists. There is no cap here and no plan in which extra fields are a paid add-on. A field answers the question of what the value is, which is why it travels to the form, to the job ad and to the export.<\/p>\n

The second block is tags, the color-coded labels you can read without opening a record. A tag can be pinned to a project, to a candidate and to a user account, and that last one is the part people do not expect. I do not know another recruitment system where the label hangs on the person working inside the tool rather than only on the data that person browses. The third block is a single switch on a tag group, called This group restricts access to records. Only once you turn it on do the tags in that group stop being a description and start being a boundary in the database, because what now counts is whether a user’s tag matches a record’s tag.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A small agency: your own fields and an outside recruiter on one project<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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In a small agency splitting access is rarely the problem, because everyone sits in the same room anyway. The problem is that an ATS<\/a> out of the box describes a candidate in general terms, while a specific company recruits in one industry and needs things the standard version does not have. In manufacturing it will be a driving license category and electrical certifications, in hospitality a valid health and hygiene certificate, in temporary staffing weekend availability and an expected hourly rate. From what I see with clients, that kind of information used to end up in a note or in a comments column that you cannot filter or count. Now these are separate fields, and search works on them.<\/p>\n

Tags in a team that size work as shared memory. Three labels along the lines of Call back, Referred and Do not contact are visible by color on the recruitment board and on the candidate list, so nobody has to open a profile to check whether it is worth picking up the phone. The filter called Candidate does not have tags also lets you cut a whole group out of your results at once, for instance find a Java developer while skipping everyone marked as unavailable.<\/p>\n

There is one more situation where a small company uses access restrictions in exactly the same way a corporation does, only on a smaller scale. You bring in a freelancer or a subcontractor for a single project and you would rather they did not get a view of the entire candidate database you have been building for years. So you create a tag group called External assignments with restriction turned on, you mark that one project with it, and you give the same mark to that person’s account. They see their project and the candidates who applied to it, and the rest of the database stays out of reach. When the engagement ends you take the tag off the account and the matter is closed. It seems to me that this scenario, rather than any elaborate permission policy, is what will convince a smaller company to reach for access restrictions in the first place.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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An international company: tags that do not only describe, they also restrict access<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The same mechanism on a larger scale solves a problem that companies recruiting in several countries have lived with for a long time. I would not call it an invention, because large corporate systems have had attribute-based permissions for years, but you rarely come across it in a recruitment tool, and it usually means a separate permissions module rather than one switch next to a list of labels.<\/p>\n

Take an organization that recruits in Poland, in Germany and in the Czech Republic and keeps everything in one Element. A shared database makes sense, because it is one company, except that a recruiter in Berlin should not be browsing candidates who applied to Polish projects. Until now that separation was done either with separate instances of the system or by managing permissions by hand on every single project. Now one tag group and three steps are enough.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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How to separate countries in three steps<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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  1. Create a Country group.<\/strong> In Settings, in the Fields and tags section, click + New tag group, set the scope to Both, because the same tag will mark projects and candidates alike, add the tags Poland, Germany and Czech Republic, and finally turn on the switch This group restricts access to records.<\/li>\n
  2. Tag the projects.<\/strong> Inside a project go to Project settings, then Description, and pick the right country in the Project configuration section.<\/li>\n
  3. Give people their tags.<\/strong> In Settings, under Users, click the padlock next to a person and, in the Access tags window, assign the country they work in.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    What a recruiter in Germany then sees<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    A person with the Germany tag who does not have the Poland tag:<\/p>\n