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RESEARCH NOTE·· RN-FILE-NAMING-1.0··

File Naming, reloaded

Why a file-naming scheme makes your knowledge faster to find, safer to trust and easier to audit

Team Mut··baut mium··Falktron, Oelde
ABSTRACT

An accompanying study over eight weeks with twelve teams (n = 184 staff) examined the effect of a single file-naming convention (DIN 5008 + SemVer versioning, internally “S2”) on the average search time per file. Search time fell from 23 s (baseline) to 6 s (week 8); the effect held steady across team size and sector. Version conflicts dropped by 87%.

Why this matters now

We have crossed the line where file names stop serving the person and start blocking them. Cloud sync, AI search and compliance audits now treat the file name like an API — not like a sticky note.

The rules

#1Date first

YYYY-MM-DD at the front turns your file explorer into a timeline. ISO 8601 sorts alphabetically and chronologically at once — for free.

#2Keyword, not a story

One word, not a sentence. The scheme decides the order, not the length.

#3Version explicitly

_v01, _v02 — two digits, starting at 01. Saves you the sorting bugs that bite from v10 onwards.

#4Status sparingly

Status tags like _DRAFT, _REVIEW, _FINAL only when the workflow forces it. Otherwise they just clutter the eye.

#5Case does not matter

Lower-case the convention. Cloud storage sometimes ignores upper and lower case — and you should not have to know when.

Before / after

BeforeAfter
Quote Acme Ltd REVISED 2 (copy)_FINAL_now_really.docx2026-05-01_quote_acme_v03.docx

Which scheme for which use case

  • DIN 5008 (S1/S2): office, contracts, quotes, reporting.
  • SemVer (S6): APIs, SDKs, software releases — MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.
  • ISO 8601 + time (S3): logs, capture streams, telemetry.
  • GAMP 5 (S5): regulated systems (pharma, medical devices).
  • Logseq convention (S11): personal knowledge vaults with Git.
SemVer
Semantic Versioning — MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. MAJOR = breaking, MINOR = feature, PATCH = bugfix. The standard for APIs, because machines can reason about the order of the numbers.
# Example migration for a directory
for f in *.docx; do
  mv "$f" "$(date -I)_${f// /_}"
done

The human side

The most common cause of failure is not the wrong scheme but the missing example from the top. If the leadership team keeps sending “xyzFINAL.docx”, the team learns that the convention is optional.

A file-naming convention is 30% standard and 70% discipline.

— from the pilot workshop

Done in three weeks

  1. Week 1: decide the scheme (one workshop, 90 minutes).
  2. Week 2: pilot in a single team — old files live on, new ones follow the rule.
  3. Week 3: organisation-wide roll-out with a short cheat sheet (one PDF page).
CITATIONS
  1. DIN5008-2020 DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. (2020). DIN 5008··Schreib- und Gestaltungsregeln für die Text- und Informationsverarbeitung. APA
  2. PreVes2013 Preston-Werner, T. (2013). Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. APA
  3. ISO8601-2019 International Organization for Standardization (2019). ISO 8601-1:2019 — Date and time — Representations for information interchange. 10.3403/30391945 APA

Bring your knowledge into shape.

Give your knowledge a name you can find again. Your second brain holds the convention so you do not have to — a partner, not a filing cabinet.

Reserve your slot··free →
Note ID: RN-FILE-NAMING-1.0··Falktron GmbH, Oelde