Possibility to search system tags with a better query system

[Spartachetto]

It would be really useful to have the possibility to search not only for tag A AND tag B but also for tag A AND NOT tag B, or tag A OR tag B

I would value especially tag A AND NOT tag B.
Some use cases:

• All the documents about client X and not about contracts
• All the photos about family and not about private

I was thinking that even a"simple" change in the interface would be a big improvement.

My hypothesis of how to make it work would be:

• automatic focus on "Select tags to filter by" as now
• start to search when the first tag in "... filter by" field is selected
• allow to fill "... to exclude" even if "... filter by" is empty, yet do NOT start to search if "... filter by" is empty

This feature should take into account #2143, which is already part of #4699 and scheduled for Nextcloud 13

[MorrisJobke]

cc @nextcloud/designers

[jancborchardt]

A first change here could be a syntax like:

labelname not:label-to-exclude

Similar to how other search services do it.

[Spartachetto]

If you choose to use syntax, you could also provide something a bit more powerful/complex with parentheses and OR operator.
Maybe the best solution could be an "easy" interface with limited functionality plus possibility to use syntax to have more power.

[MariusBluem]

Have a look how GitHub's Issue Tracker does.

• visual filter in "Tags"-menu, which will apply as syntax in the search bar.
• syntax in search bar

[compumatter]

I am running into a problem that may highlight a "use case" for you here: https://help.nextcloud.com/t/limit-tags-scope-for-shared-folders/20560

[skjnldsv]

Do we want tags in unified search @jancborchardt ?

[Spartachetto]

Pretty please!

On a more serious tone: the unified search seems a really interesting development.

I do understand the idea that a lot of users do not use tags, yet I think that if Nextcloud offer that functionality it should offer also (as far as possible) tools to use it properly.

As you are redefining search and vastly improving it, my impression is that not including tags in it would be a missed opportunity.

Thank you for al the improvements you are developing!

[skjnldsv]

Thank you for al the improvements you are developing!

Thanks :)
The issue with tags is that listing all direct tagged ressources isn't really that great on Nextcloud (the files tag view is awful)

So I would be up for this once we have a proper tags view 🤔

[Spartachetto]

Clearly better tags view + better search tools for tags would be terrific!!!

Is there any issue for the better tags view?
I do not remember seeing it, yet if it exists it could be helpful to link it here...
Maybe #2143 could be the right issue...

[arrowd]

One feature that probably should be easy to implement is to allow searching for tags by any part of the string, not only the beginning.

In my instance, I have a lot of tags like from:foo, from:baz, etc. Typing foo when adding a tag results in 0 matches, so I have to type from:, which results in a lot of irrelevant tags.

[KernSani]

Would like to bring up this topic again. In general tags are really powerful, however how they are currently implemented for files, they are pretty useless (Nextcloud 30.0.1):

• Unified search doesn't support searching for multiple tags (search syntax would probably have to be enhanced for that, ideally with boolean operators
• In the files application only a single tag can be selected (so a tag is similar to a folder) - would suggest a filter possibility (like we have it for document types, but with checkboxes to have the possibility to select multiple tags). E.g. the deck app has such a filter

[FelixKainz]

In general tags are really powerful, however how they are currently implemented for files, they are pretty useless

Yes, please! Tags can be soo powerful. I cannot live without them.
The poor tagging search is my biggest issue with Nextcloud :/