Best Practices – File Naming Convention

by Freelance Ivanti Neurons Consultant & Developer with 100+ Service Desk / ITSM / ITAM Implementations since 1996, worldwide, posted in Best Practices

An often overlooked best practice is that for file naming conventions.

Files should always be renamed with a prefix of the last modified date in YYYY-MM-DD format, for sorting purposes, and contain a meaningful name and version number.

Descriptions such as “final” and “complete” should also be discouraged as 99% of the time there will be revisions.

This best practice ensures files are easily found, sorted, and clearly indicate the last modified date, version, and file contents.   

Note that the file saved date/time often changes as files are sent via email, download again, or saved by mistake.

For example, Task #8043 has two attachments:

  1. Copy of 2020-09-11 – Sample UAT Test Scripts Complete.xls
    should be
    2020-09-11 – UAT Test Scripts v2
  2. 2020-09-11 – Sample UAT Test Scripts Complete.xls
    should be
    2020-09-14 – UAT Test Scripts v3