This article will show what a naming convention can look like in the documents section.

Before you start reading through this article it is important that you understand the basics of naming conventions. You can find out how to use custom fields, set up a naming convention and assign the convention to a folder.
​
First I would like to start out with the simplest convention possible to explain what this naming convention does when applied to a folder. Later in the article we can work our way to more complex conventions.

The following topics will be described in this article:

Let's start off with the simplest convention possible to see what a convention can look like when it is enabled. This way you will know how to recognize when a convention is active.

The simplest convention possible is made by making a new convention and clicking submit right away:

This convention will accept files of any name and with any extension. Although this is no different than the regular upload process this is what is done in this article to show what a convention can look like.

Applying the naming convention to a folder

Naming conventions are turned on per folder in document settings.

After applying this convention to a folder you will notice that it will have a gear icon.
​

Information panel:

If you select the folder you will also notice a change in the information panel on the right. Here the preview of the expected document name will appear under the name of the folder.

As always you can hover over the preview to see information about the different blocks.

When you make a new folder in a convention folder you will see that it has a gray gear badge. This means that it has inherited a naming convention from a parent folder.

If you select a folder with a naming convention applied you will see a naming convention preview under the name of the folder in the information panel on the right.

This preview depicts the document name pattern that new documents in this folder have to follow.

When you upload a file to a folder that has a naming convention applied you will see that it either gets accepted or rejected depending on the criteria of the naming convention.
In the example from above both the name and the extension of the file can have any characters of any length.
​

Below you will see what it looks like when a file with the name test.txt is uploaded:

Block preview

As you can see in the gray area below Upload document in addition to the name of the folder you are uploading your document to you will now also see a preview of what file name the naming convention expects. If you hover over any of the blocks in the preview you will see they are document blocks expecting text of a variable length.

You can now click on upload and the file will be uploaded.

In a folder where a naming convention is applied you will see that documents have a gear badge on their icon. This badge means that the document exists in a folder with a naming convention applied. It is possible that the document was uploaded before the naming convention was applied so it does mean that it follows the naming rules.

When you open the document to view it, the first thing you will see is that the document name of is grayed out. Document names in a folder with a naming convention follow the rules of the convention. It is therefore not possible to edit the name of such a document.

This document does not comply with the naming convention

If a the naming convention is applied to a folder that already had documents in it there is a chance the name of the revision does not comply with the convention.

You will see that this is the case when there is an explanation mark behind it.

This can be because of two reasons.

To continue learning about naming conventions check out these articles:
​Medium naming convention

Advanced naming convention