File Management — Network Drive

Kinaxis

Organize the Company’s Network Marketing Drive

Project Overview

THE OPPORTUNITY

Kinaxis was looking to organize their network marketing drive to establish a single source of truth, enable users to locate files more efficiently, and build a holding spot for the files that would be migrated to a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.

THE HURDLE

The drive contained approximately 23,000 folders and 170,000 files that appeared to have little structure or adhere to a folder or file naming convention. With a high turnover of Marketing Team employees, the organization of folder and file names varied.

THE SOLUTION

Interviews were conducted with various members and leads of the teams under Marketing to understand if and/or how their teams were utilizing the marketing drive. Then, an audit of the drive was completed to understand the type of files that were stored there, when and who they were created for, and what project they served. The interviews and audit helped to strategize on how to organize and implement a new folder structure and define folder and file naming conventions.

DETAILS

Project Length: 1.5 years
Team: 1 person
Role: Project Manager and Taxonomist
My Contributions:

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

TAXONOMY

Discover & Learn

RESEARCH PERFORMED

Prior to the folder restructure and naming conventions being proposed, the following items and questions needed to be addressed:

  1. Access: The IT Team provided me with access to the marketing drive.

  2. Interviews: I interviewed 15 people from the seven teams under marketing (that made up the larger marketing team). The interviews confirmed that the only team actively using the marketing drive was the Corporate Marketing Team. The Corporate Marketing Team is the team that completes the creative for the company and manages its’ content. The team is made up of content, design, video, web, and production employees.

  3. Audit

    1. Numbers: I identified a total of 23,091 folders and 169,630 files on the drive.

    2. Review: I reviewed the folder structure and files on the drive (snapshot below).

  4. Questions

    1. Who owns the folders?

      1. If it is a team, is it the Corporate Marketing Team or another team?

      2. If it is an employee, are they from the Corporate Marketing Team or another team?

        1. Is the employee still with the company?

    2. What folders and files are currently being used?

    3. What files are most likely to be reused and/or revised?

    4. What teams does the Corporate Marketing Team serve?

    5. What types of projects and project files does the Corporate Marketing Team create and work on?

    6. Who has access to the drive that should be notified about the restructuring and renaming of the folders and files?

MARKETING DRIVE (ORIGINAL STATE)

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Strategize & Plan

PLANNING PERFORMED

After the initial items were addressed and answered, I was able to start planning the restructuring and naming conventions at a high-level.

  1. Folders: Since the drive is meant to store reference artwork, in progress and final versions of the files, I needed to ensure the structure was intuitive to a user looking for a file to either reference, reuse, and/or revise.

  2. File Names: Because folders and files can be located on the drive by searching words within their name, I wanted to ensure the names contained descriptive keywords.

Concept & Proposal

I defined the various levels of the folder structure and created naming conventions (examples below).

  1. Folders

    1. Level 1

      1. Team: Since the Corporate Marketing Team was the only marketing team actively using the drive, I created folders for each of the teams that made up Corporate Marketing. I identified four teams.

      2. Corporate Assets: I created a folder to store the company’s brand assets. Since the assets are used by the larger Corporate Marketing team, I wanted to ensure that they were accessible to users in a Level 1 folder (as opposed to being in a subfolder within the Design Team’s Level 1 folder).

      3. Current/Archive: Since there were a significant amount of files that were old and could be archived, I decided the Level 1 folder structure would account for both the current and archived files. The Level 1 folder structure would have a folder for the current files (files created in 2021 and after) and an archive folder, named “z_archive”, which would fall last alphabetically in the structure and store all of the files created in 2020 and before.

    2. Level 2

      1. Year: Once the team and corporate assets folders were identified, the subfolders would be named by the year.

    3. Level 3

      1. Project Name: Within each year subfolder would live a folder that was named after the project name assigned in the project management system. The project management system was used to receive and track all creative requests. It was crucial that the project management system’s project name carried over into how the project files were organized on the drive for findability.

    4. Level 4

      1. Resource Type: Within each project name subfolder would live a resource type folder that defined the type of collateral being created for each project.

    5. Level 5: Within each resource type subfolder would live a set of folders that defined the process (copy, working files, proofs, final files, and references). This was specific to the Design and Video Teams folder and file organization.

  2. File Names: Because folders and files can be found on the drive by searching words within the name, I had to ensure the file names were descriptive. I came up with the following file naming convention(s):

    1. In Progress Files

      1. Year_Quarter_ProjectName_ResourceType_InProgress_VersionNumber

      2. Year_Quarter_ProjectName_ResourceType_InProgress_VersionNumber_ReviewersInitials

    2. Final Files

      1. Year_Quarter_ProjectName_ResourceType_LanguageAbbreviation_YearMonthDateCreated

FEEDBACK

The overall feedback I received was positive in regard to the structure and folder and file naming conventions. The interviews and audit that were completed prior to the proposal greatly helped in being able to present the structure and folder and file naming conventions in an almost approved state.

Final Implementation

Before implementing the new folder structure, I contacted the teams that had access to the drive to let them know about the change. After notifying them, I implemented the new folder structure. I reduced the Level 1 folders from 110 to six. The file naming conventions are utilized as new projects are created. The moving and renaming of archived files is still a work in progress.

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BUSINESS IMPACT

An organized drive allows for users to locate files more efficiently and utilize them to either reference, reuse, or revise. Though it is difficult to quantify the amount of time and effort saved by implementing a new structure and naming conventions, following best practices always yields better results. Organizing the drive also sped up the implementation and launch of the company’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.