Naming conventions are everywhere, making sure things runs smoothly behind the scenes (Jacob Lawrence’s “The Library”, 1978)
Isn’t it great when you can find the file you’re looking for simply by the title, without having to open several different ones to figure out if they’re what you’re looking for or not? If files aren’t named properly, they become hard to find and confusing. How to know if this “schedule 2025 final (2).docx” is the final version or not? Or if you have files named “schedule 2025.docx” and “schedule 2025 (1).docx”, which one are you using and should keep?
Naming conventions take effort to implement and maintain. The survey we did last year showed that many people would like some more guidance on this topic of naming conventions, and this blog post is for you. Naming conventions can take effort to implement and maintain, but the end results are more than worth it, bringing ease of access, increased privacy, and better storage management.
Naming conventions should:
- Document content (what is this document about)
- Document completion status (is this a draft, or is this a final version)
- Say what type of record it is (meeting minutes, agendas, guidelines, contracts, schedules, presentations, reports, etc.)
Some naming elements examples include:
- Contract number/code
- Account number
- Project number
- Subject
- Date (following the ISO YYYYMMDD standard)
- Revision control
What is Revision control?
- Revision control serves to make sure the version of the document you are looking at is the most up to date as possible
- Drafts use letters, such as A, B, C, etc.
- If a document is currently being edited, record who is editing it with their initials + edits (like Schedule2025_RevA_LMedits.docx)
- Final versions use numbers, starting at 0, after a document is finalized, and updated as needed with subsequent numbers
- If revisions to a final version are needed, the document goes back to having a letter to indicate it’s a draft again (Schedule2025_Rev0A.docx) and it becomes “Schedule2025_Rev1.pdf” once it’s a new final version
- Saving a final version in .pdf format is crucial to ensure document fixity
An example of a file name under these conventions would be
XYZ_ContractNegotiations_20241108_Rev0.pdf
Where ‘XYZ’ refers to the contract or account number; ‘ContractNegotiations’ is the title of the file; the date is included; Rev0 informs us that it is the first version of this file created; and pdf, the file format indicates that it is fixed. The file names might be longer, but they are easy to find, understand, and sort through without any need to open them.
We hope this helps to clarify records naming questions. If you are having issues with finding records or re-organizing your files, an Assessment Process or a Governance Project might be right for you.