Best Practice on Naming Convention

Whenever you create a new item in Agillic, you need to provide a name for it. This is important so you're able to reference the item in your campaign and connect, for example, a Flow with a Target Group and an email.

As time goes by and you add more items to Agillic, you'll end up with many different items across your instance. For this reason, you must carefully consider a good naming convention. Planning out the names for future items ahead of time will ensure the name easily identifies the purpose and functionality of each item.

In this article, you'll find information about:

• Agillic's Recommended Best Practice on Naming Convention
  • Naming for Data Fields
  • Naming for Flows
  • Naming for Steps
  • Naming for Emails
  • Naming for Images

Agillic's Recommended Best Practice on Naming Convention

Our recommendations for naming conventions are closely related to the recommended folder convention. These recommendations are also determined by the specific item type.

Naming for Data Fields

Data fields are such an essential part of Agillic. Therefore, it's important to consider what to name them so they're understandable to everyone.

Each organisation has their own system on how naming conventions fit into their use cases. However, we recommend the following:

• Keep it simple and precise - we recommend naming your Data Fields something simple. All you need is an sign post to precisely what the Data Field is used for. 
• Avoid spaces - You can't use spaces when naming Data Fields, but you still need to ensure it's coherent. Instead, we recommend you use an underscore (_) between the words, such as ISSUE_DATE and EXPIRY_DATE.
• Avoid special characters: When creating a Data Field, you can only use letters, numbers, and underscores. The only permitted special characters are specified e.g. the danish letters Æ, Ø, Å, comma, dots, @, etc.

Naming for Flows

We recommend sorting your Flows based on function. You should consider a folder structure like:

• Data Flows - for Flows with Data Steps.
• Email Flows - For any Flow with a single Email Steps.
  • Country-specific - for Flows which are only sent to a single country or split between countries.
  • Reoccurring Flows - For Flows with a reoccurring schedule.
  • Triggered Flow - For all triggered email Flows.
  • Newsletters - For all email newsletter Flows.
• Export Flows - For all Flows with Export or Webhook Steps.
• Extension Flows - For all Flows with Extension Steps.
• Print Flows - For all Flows with Print Steps.
• Push Flows - For all Flows with Push Notification Steps.
• SMS Flows - For Flows with SMS Steps.
• Social Media Flows - For Flows with Facebook Custom Audience or Google Customer Match Steps.
• Welcome Flows - For Flows specific to a welcome campaign.
• Other Flows - for Flows which does not match any other folder.

The names of each Flow also depend on the associated campaign, if they have one. But, for the most common campaign types such as newsletter, we recommend using a shortcode like 'NL'. This could then be followed by an issue number since a newsletter isn't necessarily sent every week or month. Lastly, a short identifier will help locate some unique content used in the Flow.

Using these recommendations your Flow should have a format like:

NL 046 Ice Cream

Naming for Steps

We recommend you name a Step to describe its function within the Flow. If the Flow is already called 'NL 046 Ice Cream', you don't need to also specify these pieces of information in the Step name. In this Flow, you should name the Email Step: 'Send newsletter'. This is especially useful when you create bigger Flows, as you know exactly what each Step does without unnecessary information.

An open newsletter Flow with an email Step named with the recommended naming convention

Naming for Email

We recommend you sort your emails based on the type of email. You should consider a folder structure like:

• Data Emails - For all emails used for data-specific campaigns like an email for an Export Flow.
• Live Tests - For any emails related to testing on live recipients, like a split test or subject line test.
• Newsletter - For all newsletters.
• Signup - For all emails related to the specific email signup campaign.

You can use this folder structure to identify the overall campaign for the email which you should also use for the first part of the email name. As the best practice for Flow names, you should name the emails based on their campaign identifier followed by more specific content.

For a split test email with a Promotion in the 'Live Tests' folder, you should name the email:

LT Split Test - Promotion

For the 46th issue of the newsletter with a sale on ice cream, you should name the email:

NL 046 Ice Cream

A newsletter email using the recommended naming convention

Naming your Images

We recommend you sort images in folders based on the use of each image. You should consider a folder structure like:

• Images - For all images with the exception of template specific images.
  
  •  Campaigns - For all images related to a specific campaign.
    • Newsletter - For all images related to Newsletters.
    • Split Test - For all images related to split testing.
    • Two for One - For all images related to a specific 'two for one' campaign.
    • Welcome - For all images related to a welcome campaign.
  • Logo - For logos of your company.
  • Products - For all product-related images.
    • Banner - For all banner images of products.
    • Square - for all square images of products.
  • Stores - For all store related images.
    • Banner - For all banner images of stores.
    • Square - For all square images of stores.
• Templates - For all resources related to templates.
  • Email - For all resources related to Email templates.
    • Default - For all resources related to an Email template called 'default'.
      • Img - For all images related to an Email template called 'default'.
  • Web - For all resources related to Web templates.
    • Default - For all resources related to a Web template called 'default'.
      • Img - For all images related to a Web template called 'default'

Using a folder structure like the one shown allows you to have very short image names as most of the description is already defined by the folders.

For example, you should name a square image of a chocolate bar product 'Chocolate Bar.png' and place it in the right folder to create the following path:

Images/Products/Square/Chocolate Bar.png

As Agillic automatically encodes the path to your images, you don't need to use an underscore in the names of either folders or images .

An image using the recommended naming convention