Community Documents FAQs: Naming Files

Be consistent:

The need to be consistent is key to storing, retrieving and sorting documents within a system. Some guiding elements to consider include:

• avoid using the name "Earlham" and the word "Committee"
• clarity over brevity is preferred
• limit characters to A-Z, a-z, 0-9, Underscore, period and hyphen

Results desired: yyyy-mm-dd-Type-Committee-Title_of_Document.pdf

Date, function/type, committee and title of document

Four elements have been found to be vital when naming documents for this application – date, function/type, committee and title of document. Find below additional notes on each area and examples.

Date: Use four digits for the year, a dash, two digits for the month, a dash and two digits for the day followed by a dash to separate it from the function/type name. No slashed, dots or underscores will be used for this date information. Examples include:

• November 11, 2008 would become 2008-11-11
• Dec.8, 06 would become 2006-12-06
• 5.10.72 would become 1972-05-10

Function/Type: Including the function or type of document within the title helps the user to quickly identify what document they are looking for. By selecting a function/type tag from a supplied limited list will also increase effective searching. A dash will separate the date and the type of document. The list of options is noted below. Please put underscore in between words in the type.

Agenda, Appeal, Appointment, Approved_document, Approved_proposal, Briefing_paper, Charge, Draft, Essays, FAQs, Finding_letter, Form, Goals, Memo, Minutes, Plan, Policy, Presentation, Procedure, Proposal, Questions, Recommendations, Reports, Responses, Review, Schedule, Search, Statement

Committee: include the abbreviated name of the committee.

• Examples: FISC, ARC, CPC, Welfare, Events, Faculty.

Title: If necessary, the title should avoid using the name Earlham and the word Committee. Clarity over brevity is preferred. Individual words within the title should be separated with an underscore not a space or dash.

Examples:

• 2009-07-16-Proposal-Welfare-Intern_benefits.pdf
• 2004-11-11-Minutes-Faculty.pdf
• 2005-04-23-Recommendation-FCTF-Good_Behavior_Day_Off.pdf