It’s a great time to be getting organised. In reality, any time is a great time to be getting organised.
We’ve written before about the vast benefits of spring cleaning, but today is all about a deep dive into files. This is something we all deal with on a daily basis, be they presentations, word documents or spreadsheets.
Sometimes organising them can feel like a terrible chore, but we’re here to tell you it’s easier than you think. And can be done in five easy steps.
Step1 – Set a file naming convention
As with all tidying, stuff is going to get a bit more messy before it gets more organised. As a starting point it’s worth thinking about whether your files all have a naming convention. Whilst setting this up can be manually painful in the short term, in the long run it will help to make things easier to find.
It doesn’t really matter the naming convention you pick, so long as all the files use the same one (so you might need to write and communicate a policy about this). A common convention could be [date]-[file name]-[draft version / final].
Step 2 – Check everything is in the right place
It’s easy when there are multiple people using the same filing system for things to end up in the wrong places. It can happen for any number of reasons from human error to an unclear filing policy.
Now you’ve taken the time to name everything correctly, make sure that everything is in the right place. In reality you can do steps one and two in tandem with each other.
Step 3 – Check everyone has the right access
Following making sure the files are in the right place and named correctly its time to make sure that everyone has the right access to everything.
This will naturally differ from business to business, you may have a policy that everyone can see everything or you may prefer to split files up a bit more. Only you will know the answer, but make sure that you’ve set it to something you’re comfortable with.
Step 4 – Check if it’s getting backed up
Before moving on to the final step, as you’re looking at the data in your business make sure that you check if its getting backed up.
Most cloud based operating systems will now do this automatically, but if there are additional steps you’d like to take with your back up – or if there is a manual back up you need to do, now would be a good time to do it.
Step 5 – Archive or delete what you don’t need
Now you know where everything is and are making sure that things are getting backed up, you will be aware of what things you need and what you don’t.
For the ease of all users, it’s always better to have less files. So now that you’ve done the hard work to start from a clean slate finish off your work by making sure to archive or delete anything that you don’t need.
If this has made you think about your IT needs and how they can be improved in your business, WebbyTech is here to help.
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