Best Practices - Naming Things in EventStream/AudienceStream

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This guide provides a strategy for naming and organizational best practices to create consistency within your EventStream and AudienceStream account. 

In this article:

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Why Naming is Important

As you build out your EventStream and AudienceStream configuration, you will have dozens, if not hundreds, of components to work with. Having a robust and consistent naming convention provides organization and clarity, enabling you to find attributes, audiences and other items quickly and confidently.

Some of the benefits include:

• Item Grouping
  Items will be listed together in the UI making it easy to see related components.
• Avoiding Duplication
  Standarding your naming convention across all users of your account will help avoid different users creating the same configuration twice under different names.
• Better for Team Work
  Training your team on your established naming convention will eliminate confusion about the purpose of each component.

Naming Structure

In most cases there should be a simple name that describes an attribute or audience e.g., Order Total or First Time Buyers. However, there may be important information about a component that requires a more specific name. Below is the recommended approach for naming.

Format

Brand - Source - Descriptor - Specifier

• Brand
  Only necessary when there is more than one brand. Best to use an abbreviation to keep the name as short as possible.
  • Teal (tealium.com)
  • AS (AudienceStream)
  • iQ (iQ Tag Management)
  • TLC (Tealium Learning Community)
• Source
  The source the data is coming from – Online or Offline, In-store purchases, Online orders, etc. Only necessary when there is more than one data source.
  • ONL (Online)
  • OFL (Offline)
• Descriptor
  The main description of the component.
  • Order Total
  • Product Categories Viewed
• Specifier
  Any terms that capture refined behavior, such as a time frame, number of occurrences, or expected values.
  • Lifetime
  • 30 Day
  • Most Recent
  • 5 Times
  • Silver/Gold/Platinum

Examples

"Order Total – Lifetime"

"Product Categories Viewed – Visitor (favorite)"

"Teal – OFL – Order Total – 30 Day"

"AS – ONL – Product Categories Viewed - Visit"

Creating a Name

Start with the descriptor and specifier, then add on from there when necessary:

• Descriptor: "Order Total"
• Specifier: "Order Total - 30 Day"
• Brand: "Teal – Order Total – 30 Day"
• Source: "Teal – OFL – Order Total – 30 Day"

Prefixes

Prefixes are a way to help group similar items in the drop-down menus and selection lists throughout the UI. By using the same prefix in the name of several related omponents, all variations will appear in a group, making it clearer to see your options.

For example, you might have a visitor attribute indicating the "status" of the user, with a separate attribute for each status.

• Logged In Visitor
• Registered Visitor (not logged in)
• Unknown Visitor

Using these names (without a prefix), the attributes will not appear together in the UI and you lose context about all possible statuses.

By using a consistent prefix, these attributes will be grouped together in the UI whenever a selection can be made, making it easier to see all options that are available:

• Visitor Status - Logged In
• Visitor Status - Registered
• Visitor Status - Unknown

Labels

We recommend that you create a labeling strategy suited to your account and organization. Examples of helpful labels can include:

• Brand
• Audience
• Use Case
• Data Source
• Connector

The most important part of labeling is consistency--be sure to label all components associated to a label