Usage Scenarios for "Registers" (A-Z and Decimal Filing)

What types of usage scenarios are folks putting the “Registers: A-Z” template to work on? I’ve got a large project that needs organizing and wondering if an A-Z Register structure might be just the ticket:

Basically, I need a structure to organize lots of fairly short text snippets (most will be 1-2 paragraphs) about a large number (200+) of culinary ingredients. At first, it seemed that the best approach would be to create one Group per ingredient, but I think that might be unwieldy both in physical sense (too much scrolling up/down the group list) and also organizationally given the relatively short length of each individual article/file for each ingredient.

So, I’m thinking of using the A-Z Register template to jump-start this process and treat it more like tabbed file-folder system. Normally, I’d make each topic a separate group entirely, but the A-Z Register seems like it was made for this type of use, as it lets my human method of conceptualizing where data is located work along DT’s great AI function - all without any tagging!).

Example:
“A” Group
-Adobo
-Allspice
-Annato
-etc…
“B” Group
-Balsamic
-Bell Pepper
-Bay
–Bay, California
–Bay, Turkey

Any suggestions as to whether this would be a good use of the A-Z Registers templating feature?

Also, and while I’m on the topic of DT’s Registers, can someone explain to me how the “Decimal” filing system is used in German offices? This is, pardon the expression, a somewhat foreign concept out here on the U.S. prairie. DT’s Help file says, alluringly:

“Decimal Filing System: Adds ten groups for the decimal filing system using in many companies in Germany, Europe, for filing (scanned) paper documents.”

Is there some special magic to organizing PDF’s into 10 subgroups that only uber-organized German firms know about? Details please! :smiley:

I don’t know about German offices, but a classification system based on ten categories, then ten or few subcategories for each of those, and so forth, is used widely in archiving. The structure of the categories can be adapted as you wish. (See Universal Decimal Classification in Wikipedia, for an example.)

Your scheme should work well. I would suggest starting with fewer rather than more subdivisions. Depending on your data (which only you know well) it might be easier to make more granular subdivisions in the future than to have to consolidate a structure that proves to be too large and difficult. With an emerging classification such as your project I find it better not to focus so much on structure initially because you’ll likely want to change it as you go along.

OT, by the way, it is fairly trivial to copy one of the in-built DT smart templates and make your own structure. This entails duplicating, then opening an in-built template package, making a few edits to the script, change some file names, and create a file structure that meets your needs. One approach is to export an existing group structure (groups, subgroups, etc.) in one of your databases to the Desktop and drag it into your custom smart template. When you use your custom template you’ll get a new instance of that group structure and any documents that were in it. Doing your own smart templates is a small 30 minute task perfect for a rainy Sunday morning. :slight_smile: When I get some time I’ll post a more detailed explanation of my approach to this. Be careful to keep an archive copy of your custom template somewhere in case a future install of DT overwrites your work. :confused: