projectdoc Toolbox

The purpose and the differences between the name and title property of a doctype.

Level of Experience

There are two type of identifiers on each projectdoc document that identify the document in two different contexts uniquely. These are Title and Name.

Title

The title is the same as the title of a Confluence page. As you well know, a title has to be unique within a space (unless you have deployed some fancy plugins that help you to get rid of this constraint).

Name

The name on the other side should be unique within the document type. That is there must exist no two documents within a search space with the same name and doctype. Whereas the unique constraint of the title within its space is tightly enforced, there is no checking for the uniqueness of the name. This is due to the fact that the search space is defined at search time, while the name is specified at writing time.

Why do I need a Name?

The name allows you to have documents of different types with the same name. It might happen that you want to have your resources and your topics in the same space. If you have a resource, a book, called "Continuous Delivery" and also you want to collect resources on the topic "Continuous Delivery", your are free to do so. All you have to decide is how to name the title of the document. In case of resources we usually take the last name of the first author and add the publication date of the resource (e.g. Humble2010).

If you have two documents with the same name, you simply won't have a single match on a name query. If a particular macro expects exactly one match, it will arbitrarily choose one.

User Templates

For user templates it may be quite cumbersome to track two different concepts of naming a document. Using blueprints this could be easily handled by the wizard that generates a meaningful title based on the name provided by the user.

Since version 2.1 of the projectdoc Toolbox it is also possible to derive a name from a given title. The following space properties configure this behavior.

Doctype Document Name Pattern
Specifies a doctype-specific pattern to match against the title property to derive the name property of a projectdoc document.
Doctype Document Name Pattern Group
Specifies for the name pattern the doctype-specific group to select.
Doctype Document Name Pattern
Specifies a pattern to match against the title property to derive the name property of a projectdoc document.
Default Group Name Pattern
Specifies for the name pattern the default group to select.

Resources

Title
The title of the Confluence page.
Name
Every document instance requires a name that should uniquely identify it within its doctype.
Short Name
A shorter or abbreviated name of the document.
Short Description
The short description describes the content of the document. This information is typically displayed in document lists, where the name is rendered side by side with the short description.
Writing Short Descriptions
Benefits of and tips on writing short descriptions.