Where can I read up on best practices for file names, page links, ...

[deckeda]

The small company I work for has no document database. Drives everyone crazy. There are doc control policies and procedures but at the end of the day it’s just Word docs and PDFs in nested folders on a network drive, the K:\ drive.

And of course, many docs refer to, or are relevant to several different areas. So you see several sub folders named the same thing as other sub folders located elsewhere. Standard procedure is to open folders to see if what you’re looking for might be in that one.

K for Knowledge?

But none of that is really what my question is here.

[mattkime]

The devil is in the details.

A wiki may help.

Slack may help too.

[deckeda]

So your document has a name. But it’s filename is different and likely reflects the version or the year it was modified. And then that gets uploaded to a site page or sent to a client. And the webpage link is different yet.

My adult OCD thinks all of this is madness. Should I:

1) Just unclench and take another vodka/powdered vitamin C elixir (better than one might imagine)
2) Advocate to make the “system” better.

Disclosure: I’m entering my 4th week of employment, and still wild-eyed, not yet beaten down.

[deckeda]

mattkime wrote:
The devil is in the details.

A wiki may help.

Slack may help too.

re: Slack

We have Microsoft Teams. I have no doubt Slack is a thousand times better, but when you’re offered a way to chat with coworkers instead of emailing them, Teams is just “dandy.”

I built a Wiki at my last job 10 years ago. It was fun. I dumped a lot of institutional knowledge into it. Doubt anyone read it.

And yet ... I can see where that might be useful here. Hmm ...

[DewGuy]

Google: file naming best practices

[mattkime]

IMO, slack (or ms teams or whatever) is a million times better when there's one channel per project. Then use a wiki page to summarize where the project stands.

but people mostly want to dump everything into the same channel. old habits die hard.

Being able to easily search documents would help as well. Think 'google but for internal docs' - there's software out there that does this but its mostly aimed at the enterprise market.

[deckeda]

“One channel per project”

Sorry Matt, what does that look like?

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Microsoft networking has a 260 character limit listed for file names and paths, but you can get in trouble when it gets over 218 "characters" because sometimes allowed characters are read as %XXX. It helps if you get buy in from some sort of supervisor. If you have enough network rights, a file name search on a network can find some amazing things. Having network admin and database search training allowed me to find some things that continually surprised cow-orkers.

You can use an Excel file to store HTML/network links (or a PDF if you have Acrobat Pro) as your own index/reference/database. Once you build it up a little, it could act as a unifying force. Links in a Word document can be easily turned into an HTML index.

Edit: Once you build up a big enough index, import all the parts into a single PDF and you can search for part numbers, drawing names, and keywords.

Invalid file names and file types in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint
support.office.com/en-us/article/invalid-file-names-and-file-types-in-onedrive-onedrive-for-business-and-sharepoint-64883a5d-228e-48f5-b3d2-eb39e07630fa

[mattkime]

deckeda wrote:
“One channel per project”

Sorry Matt, what does that look like?

Each project (however that is defined) is discussed in a specific slack channel. That was conversation becomes documentation. Other people are never 'late' to a conversation as they can read the history.

[deckeda]

mattkime wrote:
[quote=deckeda]
“One channel per project”

Sorry Matt, what does that look like?

Each project (however that is defined) is discussed in a specific slack channel. That was conversation becomes documentation. Other people are never 'late' to a conversation as they can read the history.
Sounds like Teams within Teams (yeah, I know). Groups of people, and the chats and files that belong to that group. Never used Slack but I can’t imagine it’s not far more mature. Teams is simple, not terribly capable beyond basics.