Naming records so you can find them later

A record's name is the only part of it most people ever read. It appears in the list, in the picker, in the calendar and in every report.

Most names get typed once, quickly, by somebody who already knows which record they mean. Nobody else ever does.

A good name answers the question the list asks

Somebody scanning a list wants to know which row is theirs. A name earns its place when it answers that without anybody opening the record.

For a job, that usually means the customer, the site and the work. For a matter it means the client and the matter type, and for equipment it means what the thing is and which one.

Three names that fail

• Untitled. Somebody saved without a name, and now nobody can identify it.
• A date. Every record has a date already, and a list of dates sorts but never identifies.
• A number on its own. Job 4471 means nothing to a person reading a list of numbers.

Each of those looks fine in the record and useless in the list, which is where people actually read it.

Let the name build itself

A name typed by hand depends on whoever typed it. A name built from the fields you already filled in stays consistent across everybody.

In Diract the record form builds the name from the fields that identify it, such as the customer, the site and the work type. Your own typed words stay in front of them.

A status never joins the name and nor does a person, because both change while the record stays the same thing.

Make the name field required, at the point of entry

Nobody can repair a nameless record later, because nobody remembers which record it was meant to be.

Every form that creates a record asks for its name, including a quick add on a dashboard. Our guide to building a table covers the rest of that first setup.

Keep names short enough to read in a list

A name carrying six facts gets truncated everywhere it appears, and the part that survives is the part you wrote first.

Three parts identify the record, and the fields hold the rest. A name carrying six facts gets truncated wherever it appears, and only the opening words survive. A name is a label, not a summary.

Rename the old ones in bulk, once

A table with two years of inconsistent names stays hard to search until somebody fixes it. That is an afternoon, and it only happens once.

Sorting by name exposes the patterns, and they correct in groups. Searching improves immediately for everybody who uses that table.

A reference number belongs beside the name, not instead of it

Your invoice numbers, job numbers and matter numbers all matter, and none of them identifies anything to a person reading a list.

The number belongs in its own field, where it sorts and searches properly, and the name carries the words.

Somebody searching then finds the record either way. They type the number when they have it and the customer's name when they do not.

A number also travels better than a name between systems. Your accounting package, your email and your records can all agree on a reference.

What to change first

• Three facts identify a record in each table
• The name is required on every form, including a quick add
• The name builds itself from the fields people have already filled
• Status and people stay out of the name
• Names stay short enough to survive a narrow column
• The existing names get fixed in groups, once