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As a result of moving into a new role, I'm about to embark on a complete re-filing of 5+ years worth of work documents. Typically my digital filing system always ends up completely random, even though I always start out with very good intentions.
Has anyone got any good advice on best practice document hierarchies and naming conventions? Are there any useful tools that can help me speed up this re-filing process?
My documents are all a mix of Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Visio/PDFs and are typically either BAU/Run or Project related.
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Best Practice Document Management?
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
You can never do just one thing.
-- Hardin
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:36AM
Forget pure hierarchies, they are always limiting. Us a proper piece of document management software that uses tagging.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @11:59AM
This, thousand times this. All other schemes are inferior.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday July 02 2014, @12:10PM
I'm not disagreeing. Here's essay I liked [shirky.com] about the topic.
Tags have their problems, too, though. Mainly, the way you would tag an item is different from the way I would tag an item. Kind of like using mod points on Soylent: there is loose agreement on what the moderation tags mean, but when the rubber hits the road whether my post is Troll, Flamebait, or just Overrated is very much a matter of individual preference.
I'm not saying don't use tags. I'm saying watch out because there are pitfalls with them, too. They may well be the lesser evil.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday July 02 2014, @01:22PM
You are correct that tagging can be a pain. Having some experience with this, there are a couple of key things to consider (much covered in your link). Is your ontology going to be open or closed, and who will be able to tag the documents? When I setup these kinds of systems I tend to be conservative at first, creating a limited vocabulary, forcing/requesting users to stay within those boundaries, then relax the rules as needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02 2014, @02:50PM
Could you offer some suggestions? Are there any good Free document management packages you know of?
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:20AM
I've used Nuxeo. It works and uses a standard, open API.
(Score: 1) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 02 2014, @05:11PM
Came here to say the same thing. There are better ways than hierarchies.
Now if only we could get rid of the file directory hierarchy and have a file system that uses tagging. Symbolic links do not cut it.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday July 02 2014, @06:10PM
IO think there are file-systems that do that. You can always use a hierarchy for rough divisions and use tags in addition to that. The path hierarchy is effectively just part of the name. It has some value, but really only in providing a somewhat meaningful unique resource locator for a file.