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
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