Device tags no longer displayed in Azure IoT Hub Devices view (portal)

Thanks @Thanmayi Godithi

• The tags are flat key/value pairs. We have no JSON in any of our tags. It is all plain simple and short text.
• It reproduces in Chrome and Edge browsers as well as private windows.
• I noticed it a week ago but it could have been happening for a while. I definitely wasn't like this a couple of months back. None of the tags have changed since then.
• Region is UK West.

Hi Iain White,

Thank you for the response.I will check internally whether there is a known regression affecting tag rendering in the Devices grid view and whether an active bug or mitigation exists, particularly for customers in UK West and will get back to you with an update shortly.

Hi @Iain White ,

Thank you for your patience while we investigated this with the product team.

The behavior you are seeing is currently by** design following a recent optimization made to the IoT Hub > Devices page. To improve performance for environments with large numbers of devices, the Devices blade now loads device information from a near real-time session store. As part of this optimization, device tags are no longer included in the data loaded by default for the Devices list **view, which is why the Tags column appears blank even though the tags still exist on the device twins and are returned through CLI, queries, and the individual device blade.

This explains why:

• az`` ``iot`` ``hub`` ``device-twin`` ``show continues to return the tags correctly.
• Device tags are visible when viewing an individual device.
• Deployment targeting and device classification based on tags continue to function normally.
• Only the Devices grid/list view no longer displays tag values.

As a workaround, the product team recommends the following options to work with device tags:

Option** 1: Filter devices by tag from the Devices **blade

1. Navigate to IoT** Hub > **Devices
2. Select Add** **filter
3. Choose Device** **tag
4. Enter the tag name and value
5. Select Apply

This will return devices matching the specified tag.

Option** 2: Use the Queries blade Navigate to Device Management > **Queries and run a query such as:

SQL

SELECT * FROM devices
WHERE devices.tags.<tagname> = 'tagvalue'

Please note that query results are eventually consistent, so newly created devices may not appear immediately. If immediate access to twin data is required, you can also retrieve tags using the Device Twin APIs (Get Twin) or Azure CLI.

The product team has confirmed that this behavior will be documented in upcoming product documentation updates.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

I appreciate the explanation @Thanmayi Godithi , but I think the current UX is difficult to justify. Having a Tags column that remains empty unless the user first filters on a tag is counterintuitive. Most users would reasonably expect a visible column to contain data without requiring a filter to be applied first.

The current behaviour makes it look as though tags are unavailable or broken, which is exactly why I raised the question. Even if this is technically "by design", I would suggest the design could be improved to better match user expectations.

We use the tags to visually identify devices in the portal - the device IDs themselves are insufficient to do this. Where the number of devices is relatively few, having the ability to view tags in the device list is a feature that will be really missed. It's also baffling (but sadly not surprising) to see the change implemented with no warning and in a way that makes the UI look broken. Where was the review process?
+1 for re-enabling the feature please. If the "optimisation" was done for Hubs withs lots of devices, then still allow the functionality for Hubs with fewer devices.