Scan tags overview and best practices

Scan tags are an easy way for you to categorize, filter, and find past scans.  Use them to organize scans and align them with your remediation workflow. 

On this page:

• What are scan tags?
• How to utilize scan tags
  • Separating scans from different environments
  • Identifying scans from different sources
  • Categorizing scans based on teams that use them
  • Distinguishing among unique sections of a digital asset
• Filtering by scan tag

What are scan tags?

A scan tag is a label assigned to a scan. Scan tags help you organize, categorize, and filter scans based on your remediation workflow. Note the following key points about scan tags: 

• Every scan must have one tag—only one tag can be assigned per scan.
• The platform provides these system tags: 
  • Default: Applied to quick and advanced scans. 
  • Monitoring:  Automatically assigned to monitoring scans.
• Custom tags allow for more tailored organization and filtering. If no custom tag is created, the platform applies a system tag by default.
• Administrators can create custom scan tags. 
• You can update most scan tags, except those for monitoring scans, which cannot be changed.
• If you're unsure which tag to use, select the Default tag. This groups all untagged scans.

How to utilize scan tags

By customizing scan tags, you can adapt them to a variety of different situations and teams. 

Use custom tags to: 

• Separate scans by environment 
• Identify scans from different sources
• Categorize scans based on the teams that use them
• Distinguish among unique sections of a digital asset

Separating scans from different environments

You can use scan tags to separate scans performed on different development environments. Often, production environments have an earlier stage environment where testing or development takes place. These earlier stage environments might be referred to as UAT, Staging, Dev, Test, or Pre-Prod environments. Running scans in these environments helps you detect potential accessibility issues before they reach a production state. This method of labeling helps different stakeholders stay organized and makes it easier to review the history of a specific environment.

Example tags:

• Production
• Staging Environment
• Dev
• Pre-Prod
• QA

Identifying scans from different sources

You can use scan tags to differentiate scans from different sources, such as a CI integration, API, or the platform. Different stakeholders may perform scans from different places in the development lifecycle. For example, a developer may run a test as part of a CI integration. At the same time, a business stakeholder may run a scan of a production homepage. Using scan tags to separate scans from different sources helps stakeholders find the scans relevant to them and keeps your scan history organized.

Example tags:

• Test-Automation
• CI Integration
• API
• Production

Categorizing scans based on team

Different teams that perform scans can use scan tags to separate the scans. For example, more than one engineering team may be working on a product at once. The teams could be working on different parts of the product or working at different times. Give each team their own scan tag to help them work alongside each other while keeping their respective scans organized.

Example tags:

• Team A
• Team B
• Marketing/Content Team
• Dev Team C

Distinguishing among unique sections of a digital asset

Some teams may organize their development process with unique subsections. Use scan tags to organize scans performed on unique sections of your digital asset. For example, an e-commerce website might group product, checkout, and blog post pages into their own respective groups. Creating a scan tag for each of these page groups provides a quick way of identifying sections as you collect data. Likewise, separating these groups based on tags allows you to quickly filter and compare the pages over time. You can do this comparison in the Scan History section of the Dashboard.

Example tags:

• Product Pages
• Checkout-flow
• 10 Most Visited Pages
• Baseline scan
• Landing Pages

Filter by scan tag

Use the Scan tag filter to compare key metrics between scans that have the same tag. For example, filter by scan tags if you want to track the progress of a specific issue, or ensure that a previous issue does not reappear. 

Scan tags filtering is available on the Scans page.  

To  filter scans by their scan tags: 

1. Navigate to the workspace level. 
2. Under Workspace, select Digital assets.
3. Select the digital asset you want to view the scans page for.
4. Choose Scans.
5. From the Scan tag dropdown, select the scan tag you want to use. ReviewScans page datato learn more about filters.
6. Select Apply filters. Your scan list will update to show only the scans that meet your specified criteria.