Manage GTM across every brand from one table

One table for every brand you manage

If you look after more than one brand in Google Tag Manager, you already know the shape of the work. A new conversion has to go into every site. An old vendor has to come out of every container. A naming rule has to hold across accounts that were set up by different people in different years. Each of those jobs is simple once, and slow and error-prone when it has to be repeated container by container.

Inventory & Cleanup is the ODDVX module for that work. It puts every tag, trigger and variable from the brands you choose into one table. From that table you can rename, pause, delete, create and copy items across as many containers as the change needs. All of it is staged into a GTM workspace and shown to you in a preview before anything is written.

ODDVX never publishes. You open each container in GTM, check the workspace and publish it yourself, so the human gate stays exactly where it is today.

This guide walks through the whole module: how it reads your brands, what the inventory shows, what each action does, how changes are kept safe, and what the module deliberately does not do. Each section links to a shorter guide for the job you have in front of you.

The one-by-one problem

Here is what adding one GA4 event to six brands looks like in GTM's own interface. You open the first container and create a workspace. You recreate the Data Layer Variable, the Custom Event trigger and the tag, then check the names and settings. Then you go back to the container list and do it again, five more times.

The repetition isn't the only cost. Every pass is a chance for a name to drift, a setting to be mistyped or a brand to be forgotten. The more brands you manage, the more the containers drift apart, and the harder the next audit becomes.

ODDVX doesn't replace GTM. It removes the repetition between you and GTM. You fill in the change once, choose the containers, read one preview and apply it. Then you publish each container in GTM as you always would.

How Inventory & Cleanup works, in five stages

Every job in this module follows the same five stages. Knowing them makes the rest of the series easy to follow.

1. Extract. Pick the brands you want to review and press Extract. Every tag, trigger and variable in every container of those brands comes back in one pass. There is no filter to set first: you narrow the results afterwards.
2. Filter. Narrow the table to one question: orphaned triggers, tags of one type, items whose name breaks a rule, one container.
3. Stage. Select rows and choose an action, or add new items. Every change appears in the same table as a pending row. Nothing has been written yet.
4. Review & apply. ODDVX runs a dry run of the whole batch and shows what will happen in each container. Apply sends exactly that batch into a workspace per container.
5. Publish in GTM. You open each workspace in GTM, test it and publish it. ODDVX stops at the workspace.

Brands, GTM accounts and containers

ODDVX works with the brands you have set up in the app, and each brand points at a GTM account. When you pick a brand and extract, ODDVX walks every container in that GTM account: production sites, staging containers, old microsites. That is deliberate. It gives you the full picture, and you can narrow it with the Container filter afterwards.

Two things are worth knowing before your first extract:

• One GTM account can hold several brands. Some groups keep several sites in one GTM account. Picking any of those brands returns every container in that account. Use the Container filter to focus on the one you need.
• Copy reaches further than the extract. When you copy an item, the target list includes every web container your Google account can see, whether or not you extracted it. Create, by contrast, targets the containers in your current extract.

If a container you expect is missing, check first that your Google account has access to it in GTM.

Reading the inventory

The extracted table has one row per tag, trigger and variable. The columns are:

• Name. You can double-click it to rename a single item.
• Type. Shown with GTM's own type names. Community Template items show the template's name.
• Status. Active or Paused, for tags only.
• Usage. Whether anything that can fire actually depends on the item.
• Account and Container. The Container column appears once more than one container is in the extract.

Above the table, five tiles count Tags, Triggers, Variables, Orphaned and Only inactive users. Clicking a tile applies it as a filter; clicking it again clears it.

The Usage column is the one people misread most, so it gets its own guide. In short:

• In use means something that can fire depends on the item.
• Only inactive users means it is referenced, but only by things that can't fire, such as a paused tag.
• Orphaned means nothing references it at all.

None of these is the same as a tag being paused. Reading GTM usage verdicts explains each case.

The seven actions

Everything you can do from the inventory table falls into seven actions. Each one applies to particular kinds of item:

One batch, many kinds of change

You don't have to apply one kind of change at a time. A single batch can create a variable, a trigger and a tag, copy a template tag, rename three old tags and pause one more. The bar at the bottom of the panel keeps count, for example 9 pending changes · 4 creates, 3 renames, 1 pause, 1 delete. Discard all or Revert undoes staged work before anything is written.

When you apply, ODDVX works through each container in dependency order: new variables first, then new triggers, then new tags, then the edits to existing items. That ordering is what lets a tag you create fire on a trigger you created in the same batch. It is also what makes a vendor swap possible in one review: stage the new tag, pause the old one and rename it, together. See Swap a vendor tag across brands in one reviewed batch.

The safety model

Writing to many containers at once only makes sense if you can see exactly what will happen first. These guarantees hold for every batch:

• Preview first. Review & apply always starts with a dry run that writes nothing, not even a workspace. Apply then re-sends that identical batch.
• A workspace per container. By default each container gets a new workspace under one name you choose. You can use the Default Workspace instead, and the review warns you that this is the one your team publishes from.
• Never published by ODDVX. The change sits in the workspace until you publish it in GTM.
• Copies never overwrite. If a target already has a trigger or variable with the same name, ODDVX reuses it, and flags it when its settings differ.
• Re-run to resume. If a batch stops part-way, run it again with the same workspace name. Whatever already landed is skipped, and the rest is created.
• Large deletions ask twice. A batch with 10 or more deletes asks you to type DELETE before Apply.

Two guides cover the details: Read the Review & apply preview and Workspaces, publishing and recovery.

Free and Premium for multi-brand work

Every action in this module is available on Free. The limit is scope: one GTM account per run. Within that account you can extract every container, create in all of them and copy between them.

Premium removes that limit. You can:

• Select several brands, or all of them, in one extract.
• Create and copy across GTM accounts.
• Export the inventory as CSV or send it by email.
• Save an extract as a scheduled report.

If you run one brand, Free may be all you need. If your brands sit in separate GTM accounts, which is common for agencies, a portfolio change happens in one run only on Premium. Compare the plans.

What the module does not do

Knowing the edges saves time. Inventory & Cleanup does not:

• Publish. You publish in GTM, container by container.
• Edit an existing item's configuration. You can rename, pause, activate or delete it. For other edits, use GTM itself.
• Create every type from a form. The form covers GTM's common built-in tag, trigger and variable types. Trigger Groups, YouTube Video triggers and Community Template items are copied from a container that already has them.
• Use folders or tag sequencing. New items land at the container root, and a copy never carries setup or cleanup tags.
• Set consent settings in the Create form. A copy keeps the source's consent settings.
• Analyse usage for server, AMP or app containers. Those rows show n/a, because clients and transformations there are outside the analysis.
• Delete workspaces. Remove a workspace you no longer need in GTM.

Choose your workflow

Each guide in this series covers one job. Start with the one in front of you:

Keep going

• Use case: build once, stage it in every brand
• Set up Google access for ODDVX
• Inventory every tag, trigger and variable across your brands