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I guess it's mainly because the part numbers are randomly assigned and I'd
rather have something with a little bit of reason to it. And since I have
the control to make that call, I'm going with it! :) Anyway, I ended up on:
(First two product letters or product initials)(Letter representing kind of
doc)-V(version number of software doc is built for)R(revision number)(year)
So thanks to the person that suggested the convention! I like that it's
short and will work for our product line. Since they're coming up with a
new part numbering system (I found this out yesterday -- total coincidence)
I forwarded on the suggestions of everyone on the list who responded to
help them hammer our their own system. Definitely helpful. I published a
doc yesterday with our first official documentation part number:
"MAG-V25R613"
Thanks everyone :)
-Hannah
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Laura Lemay <lemay -at- lauralemay -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I'm curious why the product part numbers won't work for your docs. When I
> was still at an org that had part numbers, we used the product number +
> code indicating documentation + doc revision number, eg SKU123456-DOC-001.
> You could replace doc revision number with the date or some other useful
> indicator.
>
> That said if you're doing iterative documentation in wikis for iterative
> products that don't have actual "releases" then it makes much more sense to
> go by dates and times rather than try to back-fit part numbers to a
> situation that doesn't really call for it.
>
> Laura
>
> On Dec 4, 2013, at 11:17 AM, Hannah Drake wrote:
>
> > Hi TechWrl Family,
> >
> > (I'm loving this list by the way) -- Now that my company has started to
> > grow a library of professional documentation, someone suggested assigning
> > part numbers to the documentation instead of just the date it was
> released.
> > But, the convention they use for our part numbers doesn't quite work for
> > documentation.
> >
> > What numbering conventions can you suggest? Right now I just keep the
> > latest version of something on our Google wiki, which has a version
> > history, so that sort of works. But I feel like it would look more
> polished
> > if we started using some fancy, "no idea what that number means --
> > QT75729A2 is so mysterious" numbering system.
> >
> > --
> > Hannah L. Drake
> >
> >
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--
Hannah L. Drake
Lead Technical Documentation Specialist
Formulatrix, Inc.
