Using file naming conventions within Confluence

Question

If you have established a file naming convention at your company that includes the date or a version number, how do you work withing Confluence's versioning system?

Confluence will only automatically version a file if the name remains exactly the same. Is there a way around this if you want to include some visual indictaion that the file has been changed, such as the date or a version number?

Joerg Bencke2 · Answer

Hi, JSarra

this behaviour is pretty much standard for all kind of systems I know, be it cvs, svn, alfresco, confluence : The object is versioned "outside", instead of changing the updated object, but just its adjacent metadata. So the page/filename beeing part of the object would not be changed, just the additional "updated date" field or other.

As for your idea : You want to display a "this file has been updated" marker - but against which benchmark ?

Confluence offers RSS Feeds, "Recent changes" and "Watching content" functions for that. If you update a file, you can mark changes as minor (Watchers wont be informed) or major "inform watchers" and you can comment your changes "Updates from Meeting 2012-02-22".

So each user can decide for him/herself, wether confluence should inform him about updates. And that changes with each visit. I would refrain from relying on "YOu do remember the old file was called "xxx 231234123", not 231234125" or other ;) .

You should use that still, however, to archive separate Versions. E.g. if you want to make sure that the version 0.8 will always be stored and not cleaned someday, because somebody decided he wants only to keep the last 5 versions of a document.

Leaves the question how to inform : An idea would be an extension "if this item was changed since users last visit, boldprint its name and add a "NEW" splash on its corner". Anyone knows something for this ?

Josh