# Category on personal message
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** personal-messages
**Created:** [February 20, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061 "2018-02-20T18:21:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jordan1909](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan1909)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/1 "2018-02-20T18:21:29Z")
I know this had been discussed before but I needed to see if this was going to be implemented.
We have a need to have a category on a private message to determine if private messages are marked solved, etc within a specific category.
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### Author:  [@Sean\_R](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Sean_R)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/2 "2018-02-20T18:29:05Z")
I think PM tagging is coming to Discourse:
> [@Tags for staff private messages](https://meta.discourse.org/t/tags-for-private-messages/47702):
>
> I’d very much like to be able to use tags in private messages, and especially staff tasks, to help my team manage all the correspondence piling up in messages and use messaging as a way to directly provide support to members and track an issue all the way through resolution, like a task tracker. The ability to add tags like new, inprogress, waitingonsomeone, completed would be a big help.
That could work or you could set up groups since they act as categories(inboxes) for PMs. Then you could have PMs move from inbox to inbox.
I think the tagging or even some type of Solved/unsolved extension of the plugin for PMs would serve you well.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/3 "2018-02-20T18:31:53Z")
I was excited to notice yesterday that if you edit a PM’s OP, you can now add tags. There doesn’t seem to be any other UI yet but work on tagging of PMs seems to be underway. 🚀
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### Author:  [@jordan1909](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan1909)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/4 "2018-02-20T18:33:52Z")
@Sean_R
I didn’t think about tags in that sense. That could very well work for what we are doing.
My primary concern is I need to ensure that however I implement can be combined with the
solved plugin.
This could be quite interesting.
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### Author:  [@vinothkannans](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vinothkannans)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/5 "2018-02-20T18:34:34Z")
Yes @tobiaseigen, it may available sooner [PR #5610](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/5610) 😉
But the UI you mentioned is a bug. Anyway it will be fixed by the above PR itself.
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [February 20, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/6 "2018-02-20T18:35:05Z")
yes - between group inboxes, tags, assigned and solved we could be getting towards quite an excellent ticket system, with no balls being dropped ever again. 🤹♀️
> [@vinothkannans](#):
>
> But the UI you mentioned is a bug. Anyway it will be fixed by the above PR itself.
wait, what? why am I always discovering bugs and hoping they are features… 😉
super excited to see this underway in any event.
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### Author:  [@vinothkannans](https://meta.discourse.org/u/vinothkannans)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2018, 6:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/7 "2018-02-23T06:58:59Z")
PM tags feature is now available in core. Enable the site setting `allow staff to tag pms` to try it.
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### Author:  [@JQ331](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JQ331)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 6:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/8 "2020-05-04T18:06:22Z")
Hi There. I see this discussion from '18 on adding tags to private messages. In my case, I want my users to be able to send private messages to themselves and to other users, and to be able to organize those messages for later viewing.
Is it possible to have users select a category for private messages?
Is it possible for users to add tags to their private messages?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 7:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/9 "2020-05-04T19:16:45Z")
> [@JQ331](#):
>
> Is it possible for users to add tags to their private messages?
No, it is not.
> [@JQ331](#):
>
> Is it possible to have users select a category for private messages?
No, it is not.
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### Author:  [@JQ331](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JQ331)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/10 "2020-05-04T21:10:26Z")
Ok. I’ll try posting to market place to see if adding cats to private messages can be coded in.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 9:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/11 "2020-05-04T21:14:06Z")
It’s a database constraint so quite close to the metal and risky to change as plugins go and may have some unexpected effects. It would require core to add support imho.
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### Author:  [@JQ331](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JQ331)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/12 "2020-05-04T21:20:15Z")
Hmm. Thank you for that info. I’m anticipating the private messaging will be an important part of the forum, so users may be creating a lot of them–they’re likely to use the private messages as a way to keep notes. I’m just looking for an easy way for users to look back over their private messages in an organized way.
I’d assume that grouping the messages into categories is the most obvious way to do it, otherwise tagging. Could there be another approach?
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 9:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/13 "2020-05-04T21:22:28Z")
You could use custom topic fields. That would be safer.
We could certainly look at it if you post in marketplace.
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### Author:  [@JQ331](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JQ331)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/14 "2020-05-04T21:31:15Z")
I’m not familiar with custom topic fields, but sounds like that could be a possibility. I’ll post to marketplace.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 30, 2024, 3:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/16 "2024-06-30T03:51:50Z")
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2024, 8:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/17 "2024-07-01T08:08:24Z")
Categories for PMs is still not a thing, though the ‘tags for PMs’ that was introduced for staff has now been opened up to be a group allowed setting (`pm tags allowed for groups`), so you can add a trust level to that, or a more specific custom group, and they’ll be able to organise their PMs with tags. 🥳
It may also be useful to allow that trust level/group permission to create tags as well (`create tag allowed groups`) depending on how your site is organised.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 1, 2024, 8:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/category-on-personal-message/81061/18 "2024-07-01T08:08:29Z")