Choosing a Folder Structure

There is no right or wrong approach to choosing a folder structure. What suits someone else, may not be suitable for you. There are a number of things you should consider when first planning your structure, probably most important are:

• If you are working in a multi-user environment you will most likely want to restrict access to certain folders to manage security. Just like on a network, if the author does not have access to a parent folder, they will not be able to see the folders below it. Security can be further restricted using Release States.
• Choose an approach that will help you to easily identify which folders hold which information.

Remember: All the information in your library is stored in a relational database. The folders are there as a visual means for you and me to logically organize the information - so while we see objects as being inside folders, they are actually physically stored as rows and columns of information in a database.

Some people choose to create folders for each object type - all Books in one folder, all Topics in another folder, File Objects in another, and so on.

Others choose an approach with folders for each project in their Documentation set and the different Company/organization divisions, for example:

Others choose a combination of these two approaches, by further breaking down the Documentation sets to object types, for example they may add the graphics to each project to a further sub folder:

You need to choose the approach that best suits your requirements. You can have as many folders as you need (but remember that too many, may get confusing...) and as many levels as are required. Also consider the reusability of your content. By burying objects in a myriad of sub folders, others may not know that these objects exist and end up creating multiple copies of the same information - meaning the information is duplicated in more than one place.

Another useful thing to know when creating folders is that when folders are created, they inherit the security of its parent. Therefore, when you design your initial folder structure, it is worthwhile creating some folders at the very top level to set security, and then creating any sub folders within these.