Naming & Organisational Conventions - how do you do it?

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey community

I'm curious to hear about how other people manage organisation and naming conventions in their instances!

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really particular about them. It's definitely in my top 3 of most critical elements to successfully scaling an instance, and since it's one of the things I find myself discussing at length with every client of mine, I'm now writing a little guide to naming convention best practice.

My general preference for program naming is to preface the program with a unique Job Number, then a short description. I'll tweak the Job Number structure slightly for each client, but typically lean towards something like this: Region-ProgramShortcode-YYMMDD-Short Description, e.g. UK-LE-170929-Monthly Seminar. Because the Job Number is always unique to every program, I also like to use it as a reference for anything tied to it inside or outside of Marketo, like images or in documentation.

In my experience it's a convention that's proven to be scaleable, scannable, and incredibly effective.

I'd love to hear what you've done that's worked well in your instance(s)! Whether it's your preferred top level folder structure, program naming, asset organisation within folders, or document naming within Design Studio - what horror or success stories do you have when it comes to naming and organisation in Marketo?

[Gerard_Donnell4]

Hi Grace Brebner​,

I am working on a naming conventions project at the minute.  We are planning a similar type naming convention.

Some differences that we are doing:

• Breaking it up by quarter and then month at a folder level.
• We are adding the date first.  This means that when you click on the monthly folder the programs will be arranged in chronological order from the first day of the month to the last.
• We have over 50 Marketing Managers who like to go in and build programs.  Because of this we are adding their initials to the naming conventions . For example Gerard Donnelly added to your example above would be: (170929-GD-UK-LE-Monthly-Seminar).  This allows marketing managers to find their programs quickly in the left hand window.  They like to clone previous programs and don't always know when it happened and this means they can quickly find it.

Thanks,

Gerard

[Grace_Brebner3]

Thanks for your thoughts Gerard - I've never considered including the creator's initials in a naming convention. Interesting idea, I can see how it would be beneficial with that many users!

Have you found it difficult to ensure consistency in the system with that many users? In the larger instances I've worked in, diffusion of responsibility within the instance has been one of the most significant hurdles to overcome. What's worked for you in this area?

[Anonymous]

Hi Grace, you are right that naming conventions are super important.

I wrote the following post two years ago and it still holds true today. Hope this helps.

https://nation.marketo.com/community/champion/blog/2015/07/20/clean-up-your-marketo-why-you-need-to-...

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Jeff, thanks for passing that link along - super helpful post which definitely confirms a lot of the thoughts I've put to paper.