Merge Tags

A Merge Tag is a small placeholder tag, that may consist of a few words or strings of text, which you can add to any page on your help site. The text you add to the page is not formatted and is stored as plain-text on publishing the page.

Merge tags are flexible and reusable, making it simple to make site-wide changes by editing the merge tag source instead of having to modify many pages, separately.

Types of Tags

There are two types of merge tags:

1. System merge tags - These are pre-defined tags that you can re-use to quickly update a page’s content. You cannot alter or edit these tags.

2. Custom merge tags - Custom tags are those tags that you can create as per your requirements and add them to pages on your help site.

In this article, you'll learn:

How to create a Merge Tag
How to add a Merge Tag to a page
How to view, edit, and delete Merge Tags

Here's how you can create a Merge Tag:

Step 1: From your ProProfs Knowledge Base dashboard, go to + Add New >> Merge Tag.

Step 2: Provide the Name, Default Value for the placeholder. Click on Save.

Name - Enter the name of the tag you want to create.
Default Value - Enter the default value of your tag. This value will display by default if you haven't defined any tag value.

Step 3: All your created Merge Tags appear in a list as shown in the screenshot below. This page can also be accessed by going into Preview >> Merge Tags.

Here, you can do the following:

Edit a Merge Tag by clicking on its name.
Create a new Merge Tag.
Delete a Merge Tage.
This page can be accessed by going into Preview >> Merge Tags.

Here's how to insert a Merge Tag on a ProProfs page:

Step 1. Open a page for editing where you want to add a Merge Tag.

Step 2: From the toolbar, go to Insert >> Merge Tag.

Step 3. Select the System Merge Tag or Custom Merge Tag you want and click Insert to add it to the page.

When to use System merge tags

ProProfs Knowledge Base offers a library of different system merge tags that you can use at a click. Here are some scenarios, where you can use system merge tags:

1. User Identification - Use these tags to identify the profile of the author or editor who created or made changes/edits to a particular page on your help site.

Tag Name	Description
user.first_name	Display the first name of the user.
user.last_name	Display the last name of the user.
user.email	Display email address of the user.
user.role	Display the role of the user like admin, editor, etc.
user.language	Display the language preference of the user.
user.timezone	Display timezone of the user
user.last_login_time	Display the last login date and time of the user.

2. Page identification - Use these tags to identify the attributes of a page such as its title, id, status, etc.

Tag Name	Description
page.id	Display unique id of the page.
page.type	Display the type of the page as text or video.
page.title	Display the title of the page.
page.status	Display status of the page like published, draft, etc.
page.toc_name	Display the name of the page on the table of content.
page.url	Display URL of the page.
page.created_at	Display the date and time of the page when the page was created.
page.created_by	Display full name of the user who created the page.
page.last_modified_at	Display date and time of the page when the page was last modified.
page.last_modified_by	Display full name of the user who modified the page last time.
page.published_at	Display date and time of the page when the page was last published.
page.published_by	Display full name of the user who published the page last time.
page.related_articles	Display the related articles on the page.
page.published_till	Display the expiry date of the page.

3. Navigation - Use these tags to add navigation menus to a page such as "Next" or "Previous" link, breadcrumbs, inline too, and more.

Tag Name	Description
page.next_page	Display a hyperlink of the next page based on the table of content order.
page.next_page_url	Display URL of the next page based on the table of content order.
page.previous_page	Display a hyperlink of the previous page based on the table of content order.
page.previous_page_url	Display URL of the previous page based on the table of content order.
page.breadcrumb	Display the breadcrumb based on the table of content. Ex - You are here XYZ.
page.pages_in_folder	Display all the pages located in the folder.
page.folder_name	Display the name of the folder in which the page is located.
page.children_pages	Display all the pages located inside the page as a hyperlink.
page.inline_toc	Scan the headings on the current page to create an inline table of content based on those headings
page.embed_page	Display the embedded page.

4. Additional information - Use these tags to give additional information about your company, website, recently published pages in your knowledge base and more.

Tag Name	Description
site.name	Display the name of the help site.
site.url	Display the URL of the help site.
site.language	Display the language of the help site.
site.recently_published_pages	Display the most recently published page.
company.name	Display company name.
company.website	Display company website.

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