Forum Discussion

EliseElise's avatar
EliseElise
Qrew Member
9 years ago

Are there any best practice guidelines for field names?

In a screenshot for a community question I think I saw a field list where some of the field names started with "formula" followed by a typical field name.  

I do something similar for lookup fields by starting the field name with the initials for the table or app that the data point is originating from.  

I'm starting to use more formula fields for various purposes & am trying to figure out a naming convention that is comprehensible for average users.  We do not lock down reports in our app so the field name format needs to be clear enough that when a user is creating a report & has three fields that appear to capture the same info (lookup vs text entry vs formatted font display of text entry, etc.) that they can understand which one is the right field for what they are trying to show on that report.  

Forms
Formulas and functions
Relationships
  • ArchiveUser's avatar
    ArchiveUser
    Qrew Captain
    9 years ago
    I've not see any "best practices" guides as far as a naming convention goes. In my experience, however, it has a lot to do with who will be utilizing the application and the purpose of the field. One standard that I - and I know some others - tend to stick with is using XX in front of a field name if the field is no longer used and you intend to delete it.

    Other than that, I would suggest talking to the leaders within your stakeholder groups and try to come up with a consensus for what will work for your team.
  • RicardoTsai's avatar
    RicardoTsai
    Qrew Member
    9 years ago
    Hello Elise,

    First set up a convenient naming convention. For example: if you have a product table and a billing table, then think of initials or acronyms for each one. For Product table a good one is Prod and Billing would be Bill. When you create a relationship between both, QB will create its own naming convention that some times doesn't work for me. So, for fields in the Product table I create the fields with names like:  Prod_Name, Prod_Type, Prod_Description.. for the Billing it would be like: Bill_Date, Bill_Price, Bill_Quantity.  When you have multiple tables with multiple relationships, having those acronyms can right away help you identify where that field comes from. 

    Hope that helps.