Related to problem

One of the first problems I encountered when I started using Tana was how to categorize and relate my different pieces of information.

Tana does not have a traditional hierarchical structure, but if we create tags and fields for area, topic, subject, project... together with the use of live searches, we will have something more powerful and flexible.

When you start this is handled well, but as your tags grow exponentially and consequently the amount and variety of information you collect, it becomes more complicated.

For example, a node tagged as article can be related to a topic, talk about two concepts and a tool. We could have a supertag with a topic field, a concept field and a tool field. This can be an option if your workflow is always similar or very well defined.

But do you really need a Tool field in your article supertag? That's where the Related to field comes to the rescue.

Surely there will be more sophisticated solutions using semantic fields or complex live searches, but in my opinion this is a good option for an average user.

What is the problem of using a field Related to? Well, as it is a kind of disaster box in which we do not know what we are going to put. We end up using a field configured as Plain text.

Which causes that when entering something using @ the options are excessive and are disordered.

The ideal solution would be to configure the field as an instance to limit the options, but this type of field only supports one instance, which does not work for us.

How do we fix this? Using Extending Tags.

If you are not familiar with this concept, it refers to the Tana function that allows tags to be included inside other tags by sharing fields.