An ordinary tag describes. An access tag additionally restricts visibility — you use it when branches or teams should not see each other's candidates.

With several restricting groups the conditions add up: you must match each group separately, while within a group one shared tag is enough.

Setup takes three steps and is done by an administrator. Do all three in one go, because after the first step people without a tag stop seeing the tagged records.

Go to Settings, choose "Fields and tags" and click "+ New tag group".

Name the group, for example Region or Branch, and add tags to it, one for each branch or team. Under "Where to use this group" choose Project, Candidate or Both. At the bottom of the card turn on "This group restricts access to records" and click "Save group".

Go to Settings, choose "Users" and click the padlock icon next to the person you are giving access to.

In the "Access tags" window, type the tag name and pick it from the list. Every change is saved straight away, so you only need to click "Close" at the end. A person can have several tags from the same group if they should see several branches.

In a project, click the pencil next to its name. Project settings open on the "Description" tab. Find the section named after your group, click "Add tag" and pick a tag. Candidates in that project get it automatically, as the next section explains. If the group also applies to candidates, you can tag a candidate who is not in any project on their profile, in the "Tags" card.

This is the most important mechanism and the easiest to miss. A candidate taking part in a project inherits that project's access tags. By tagging a project with a branch tag you restrict visibility of all its candidates in one move.

The admin role bypasses access tags. If you test the configuration on an admin account you will not see the effect — check on a recruiter account.

Adding a new restricting group, or tagging existing records in bulk, requires the search index to be rebuilt. Report it to support, because until then lists and filters can show the state from before the change.