Categories vs. tags vs. statuses

Sleekplan gives you three ways to organize posts: statuses, categories, and tags. They are not competing options. Each answers a different question, and most teams use all three at once. Getting the split right keeps your board readable for the people submitting feedback and powerful for your team behind the scenes.

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The three at a glance

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Status: where a post is

A status tracks a post through your workflow and is the one attribute that changes as work moves forward: Under Review, then Planned, then In Progress, then Complete. Each post has exactly one status, users can see it, and the statuses you enable for the roadmap become its columns. Status is the “when / how far along” axis. Keep it as a set of stages that move in one direction. Resist the temptation to bend a status into a kind or an area, that is what categories and tags are for.

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Category: the one axis your users see

A category is the primary way you group posts, and the only grouping your users see and pick from when they submit. A post has exactly one category, it shows publicly, and it is a short dropdown, so keep the list tight. Because it is the single user-facing axis, the important decision is what the category axis represents. Two patterns cover most teams:

• Kind of feedback: Feature, Bug, Improvement. The default, and a great fit when you have one product.
• Product or area: Web app, iOS app, Android, API, Billing. The better fit when you have several products or platforms and people need to find their corner first.

Pick the axis your users would most naturally sort by when they browse or file feedback.

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Tags: every other axis, for your team

A tag (shown as a Label on a post) is a flexible marker. Posts can have many, and by default they are internal, there to help your team slice and triage. Whatever your category axis is not, tags can be. When you want to, you can also make tags public so users apply them when posting and filter the board by them.

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The trick: category takes one axis, tags take the rest

This is the whole game. A post gets one category but many tags, so the category claims your single most important axis and tags carry everything else. That means categories and tags naturally trade places depending on how you set up your category: Notice how the “kind” and “product” axes swap between the category column and the tag column. Decide which one your users care about most, make that the category, and push the other onto tags.

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Setups by team

A few ways real teams split the three. Status is always your workflow, so only the category and tag choices change.

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Rules of thumb

• Your primary user-facing axis is the category. It is the grouping users always see and choose. Pick what helps them browse and submit; move everything else to tags.
• Keep categories short, let tags grow. Categories are a dropdown people pick from, so aim for a handful. Tags are internal by default and can be as many as you need.
• Statuses are always progress. If an attribute changes as work advances, it is a status. If it describes what a post is, it is a category or a tag.
• Make the primary axis a category, secondary axes tags. The category is always public. Tags stay internal by default, but you can expose them as a second public axis when it helps users filter.
• You can evolve. Many teams start with category as the kind of feedback, then switch it to product when they launch a second app and move the kind to tags. Re-tagging existing posts takes a little cleanup, so it is worth deciding early.

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