[00:00] Naming and organization of tags is critical in an application. You know, if you just put all `of your tags into one root folder with poor names, it is very difficult for the next person to be able to identify what the tags are supposed to be doing and where they are used in Ignition. So as you're developing your tag database, it's important to actually use folders, and to name things appropriately. So any point, if I'm, you know, bringing some tags into Ignition, so I go into some of my devices, let's say I go down to my Control Logics, and here I have, you know, a few different tanks. I'd probably want to come over here, right click, and create a folder called Tanks, and then I can drag in all of my Tanks into that folder, and now that's a really nice structure that I can work with. Furthermore, if we have a tag from the PLC that isn't named very well, like typically tags from Micrologix or Slick, they're like, you know, names N7:0 or F8:1, whatever those names are, when I drag that into Ignition of course, it's going to use that exact same name. But that name may not mean much to the next person, so you may know what N7 corresponds to, but here we should rename this, right click, rename to, let's say, you know, Temperature. And now everybody's going to know that this is a temperature tag. So we can easily move tags into folders, and if I wanted to create a folder now for all of my temperatures, I can just create the folder, take the tag, drag it into the folder, and now I've got a hierarchy that I can work with. And this hierarchy's especially important when we create certain screens and use indirection, because the only difference between certain folders might be just the name of the folder. We'll talk a lot more about that in another lesson. Another thing that's really important about naming and organization of tags is to make sure you do that early on, because if you use a tag onto a screen, like for example, if I use this tagged LED display, I use this tag maybe in other places as well. If I was to rename this tag, or move it to another folder, it's gIn this video, we'll explore the layout and basic features of the Ignition interface for working with tags. To begin, we'll go to our tag browser in the designer. I have a couple of tags pre-configured already. The first thing I'd like to do is open one of my existing tags. To do this, I can simply double click on the tag to open the tag editor window. You also have the option to right click on a tag and select edit tag. Whichever method you prefer, it gives us access to the tag editor, and we can see a comprehensive list of the configurable properties of our selected tag. Here we have a list of basic properties that control items like the name of our tag or what tag group it's in. Once in the tag editor, you can update the tag properties to new values if you'd like. For example, if I just wanted to change this tag's name, I could replace the value here and hit okay to close the tag editor window. This window also gives you a handy category navigation menu on the left.

[01:05] Clicking on one of the categories allows you to isolate a section of related properties at a time for better focus as you're making updates or checking values. The metadata properties give us the opportunity to describe our tag in ways that will help other users and developers of our project. I'll just put in a bit of documentation here, and since I'm finished making that change, I can select All Properties to return to the default view. My changes won't be saved until I click okay at the bottom of the tag editor window. One other category I want to highlight here with our memory tag is value. The specific value properties we're provided in this window vary based on the type of our tag. A memory tag will have certain value properties, while another type of tag may have different options. So just to demonstrate that idea, let's exit this memory tag and double click on this OPC tag instead. Now, in the value properties section, we have an OPC server property and an OPC item path property that can be updated as needed.

[02:10] For example, if you'd like to modify an existing OPC item path, you can click on this browse devices icon and locate a new item path you'd like to assign instead. Next, we have numeric properties. These deal with things like scaling or engineering units we'd like to use for our tag. From the tag editor, we can also configure security, scripting, alarms, or tag history. Let's take a quick look at this task bar up above. From here, we can rearrange our properties alphabetically or by category, which is the default. This button allows us to show or hide the detailed description area for whichever property is selected. I can also expand or collapse the categories with these buttons. Next, the little plus icon here gives us the opportunity to configure a custom property on our tag.

[03:03] Let's try that out. I'll give my new custom property a name -- customProperty. Then I'll choose type array. If I click okay and scroll down within the window, we can see that my new property has been added. If I decide I don't need it after all, I can always use this little trash can icon in our task bar to delete it. There are a couple more useful features in the tag editor we can explore. We have a refresh button here that allows us to pull in any changes made to this tag from another designer. Also, by default, we're showing the documentation for this tag as specified on the documentation property, but if I'd like, I can use this documentation button to see an expanded version of that and make changes directly. In addition, I can view tag diagnostics if I click here. That pop-up gives us some useful information about our tag, and since it's an OPC tag, we're also getting some OPC specific information as well.

[04:05] This is just the beginning though. In future videos, we'll dig deeper into how to configure specific tag properties, since there are so many other useful ways to interact with those properties in the designer. oing to break the reference to it onscreen. So if I change this now, I want it to be just simply Temp, you're going to notice that my screen over here, is showing Tag Not Found on the LED display. So, we allow you to rename a tag, but when you do that you got to be careful because certain things could break depending on where you're using it in the product. So keeping organized and defining your tag structure early on is critical.