--- title: "Label Management" slug: "label-management" description: "Efficiently manage and categorize your APIs with Traceable's Label Management feature. Learn to create custom labels and automate their application using rules based on API attributes. Organize your API ecosystem by labeling endpoints, services, and backends to monitor compliance, security, and performance. Streamline API tracking with automated rule-based labels for easier management of large-scale systems." tags: ["API categorization", "API Tagging System", "Automated API Labeling", "Label management", "Traceable API Rules"] updated: 2025-12-16T06:20:34Z published: 2025-12-16T06:20:34Z --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://traceabledocs.document360.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Label Management ##### Updates (July 2025 to September 2025) - *July 2025* — Updated the page to add information about creating and managing labels for API endpoints. For more information, see [Labels](/docs/label-management#labels). Labels in Traceable categorize APIs, services, backends, and third parties for easier management and tracking. You can use these labels to apply custom tags to related APIs or filter specific data within the platform. For example, you can label APIs by functionality, environment, severity, and authentication. These labels enable efficient monitoring and reporting of data within your application ecosystem. > [!NOTE] > Note > > When classifying APIs as external or internal and authenticated or unauthenticated, the labels you apply take precedence over Traceable's identification based on IP addresses or traffic. This ensures user-defined classifications are prioritized for accurate API categorization. --- ## What will you learn in this topic? By the end of this topic, you will understand: - The concept of label management and its components. - The ways to automate label assignment based on API attributes. - The ways to create and manage labels to categorize APIs, services, and backends. --- ## What is Label Management? Label management is the process of creating rules and labels to tag the API endpoints, services, backends, and third parties. This process consists of two components: - [**Rules**](/v1/docs/label-management#rules) — Create labeling rules that allow Traceable to automatically add labels to data if your defined conditions match the incoming traffic. - [**Labels**](/v1/docs/label-management#labels) — Create labels to categorize your data. You can do this from the **Discovery**→ **Inventory** or **Settings** → **Label Management** page. The following sections discuss the steps to create label rules and, using examples, how to utilize them for data monitoring. --- ## Rules You can create meaningful rules to automate label addition in Traceable. Based on the rules you define, Traceable evaluates the incoming data against the rule, and if a match is found, it either creates new labels or uses existing ones. > [!NOTE] > Note > > - A rule can create up to 100 labels automatically. > - Traceable evaluates the rules only when it receives successful response codes (between *2xx* and *3xx*) from APIs. > - When classifying APIs as external or internal and authenticated or unauthenticated, the labels created using rules take precedence over Traceable's identification based on IP addresses or traffic. This is applicable for all APIs discovered post-rule creation. ### Creating Rules You can create rules in either of the following ways: - From the Label Management page - From the Explorer page The following tabs discuss the steps to create rules using the above methods. Label Management PageExplorer Page Navigate to **Settings** → **Discovery** → **Label Management** → **Rules** tab, and click **+ Create Rule**. In the **Create Label Rule** window, complete the following steps. The example in the following steps helps create a rule to automatically label APIs that process credit card transactions to ensure compliance with PCI DSS. ![](https://cdn.document360.io/24f14f07-13d1-4684-8fae-6d8f811768ee/Images/Documentation/traceable_label_management_rule.png) Label Rule 1. Specify the rule **Name**, for example, *PCI DSS compliant API label rule*. 2. (Optional) Specify a description of the rule. 3. Specify the **Rule Conditions**: > [!NOTE] > Note > > Traceable applies an AND operation between rule conditions, which means that all conditions must be satisfied for the rule to apply. - The **Attribute** on which you wish to create the rule, for example, *path*. - The **Operation** you wish to apply to the attribute and value, for example, *matches regex*. - The **Value** corresponding to the attribute, for example, `/.*creditcard.*/`. 4. Select one or more components where you wish to apply the rule, for example, *API*. 5. Select the method of label application: - **Use existing Labels** — Select from the list of existing labels or specify a name to create a new one, for example, *PCI DSS compliance*. - **Generate from attribute value** — Specify the attribute and optionally the regex to use some part of the attribute value instead of the complete attribute value to generate labels. 6. Click **Confirm**. You can create label rules after observing the traces or spans from the **Explorer** page in **Analytics** or the **Traces** tab in the [Endpoint Details](/docs/endpoint-details) page. While creating this rule, Traceable also shows the list of attributes associated with a protocol. You can select the attributes from this list, and Traceable applies the rule accordingly. For more information on creating these rules, see [Explorer](/docs/explorer). ![](https://cdn.document360.io/24f14f07-13d1-4684-8fae-6d8f811768ee/Images/Documentation/traceable_settings_label_rule_traces.png) Create a Rule from the Explorer page ### Managing Rules Traceable displays the configured rule in the **Rules** tab. In this tab, you can also do the following: - Enable or disable a rule using the toggle corresponding to a rule. - Click the **Ellipse** (![traceable_ellipse_icon](https://cdn.document360.io/24f14f07-13d1-4684-8fae-6d8f811768ee/Images/Documentation/traceable_ellipse_icon.png)) icon corresponding to a rule to **Edit** or **Delete** it. --- ## Labels Labels are metadata tags you can use to classify and organize your APIs. This helps you streamline API monitoring and efficiently respond to critical ones. ### Creating Labels To create a label, navigate to **Settings** → **Discovery** → **Label Management** → **Labels** tab, and complete the following steps: 1. Click **+ Create Label**. 2. In the **Create Label** pop-up, specify the following: ![](https://cdn.document360.io/24f14f07-13d1-4684-8fae-6d8f811768ee/Images/Documentation/traceable_settings_label_creation(1).png) - **Name** — A name for the label, for example, *PCI DSS*. - **Description** (Optional) — A description for the label. - **Color** (Optional) — A color you wish to assign to the label, for example, *Blue*. 3. Click **Create**. Traceable displays the created labels in the **Labels** tab and on the **Inventory** page in **Discovery**. For information on operations on labels in the **Inventory** page, see [Manage Labels added to APIs](/docs/api-endpoints#manage-labels-added-to-apis). ### Managing Labels While the Labels tab displays the list of created labels along with their descriptions and associated rules, you can click the **Ellipse** (![traceable_ellipse_icon](https://cdn.document360.io/24f14f07-13d1-4684-8fae-6d8f811768ee/Images/Documentation/traceable_ellipse_icon.png)) icon corresponding to a label to **Edit** it. In the **Update Label** window, you can modify the **Name**, **Description**, and **Color** of the label according to your requirements. Alongside these details, in the **Label Rules Assigned** section, Traceable also displays the [rules](/docs/label-management#rules) associated with the label. As soon as you click a rule, Traceable redirects you to the **Rules** tab, **View Label Rule** window, where the rule details are displayed. The following demo illustrates how to do this. [Embedded content](https://demo.arcade.software/VX9B7OxfbnHVH5Ww3kME) ## Related - [Inventory](/inventory.md) - [Discovery](/discovery.md)