File management and organization. Migrating to a new Mac.

Question

About to Migrate to a new Mac and I am taking it as a fresh start to organize files better. Just curious if anyone has developed a system that they feel works well for them?

My plan is to start from scratch instead of pulling everything over directly. I'm working on backing everything up right now to a couple of external hard drives, just In need to pull anything from historical archives. Mainly I'm just looking for some conversation around strategies for high-level organization of projects, documents and demos.

My high level projects tends to be:

Non-customer specific JMP demos

Customer meetings and notes

Release planning

Internal meetings

External meetings (like Discovery)

Reference stuff (like useful presentations)

Laura_Higgins · Answer

I think the main thing to keep in mind for anyone that presents to customers is that sooner or later you are going to want to dig for something to show a customer. We build trust with customers, and making sure we never show them anyone else's files, presentations, folders, emails, etc. needs to be the highest priority for separating materials to not accidently break this trust in the middle of a demo (when you're not thinking about it).

So at the highest level I have:

- logistics (blandly named for customer details, territory plans, anything not for customers)

- demos - everything I can show a customer

Also, I am a big fan of the newer OneDrive for Business. I know my files are backed up and accessable on my phone, ipad, other computers via web login, etc. You make this your base folder (or drag your "documents" folder in here). You need the sync client - details start here:

https://sas.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0018842

MikeD_Anderson · Answer

I've been migrating to having custom path variables for my data and SQLite Databases for demos.  (It's an idea @Byron_JMP and I were kicking around a while back).

In the "demo data" directory I've been using Finder Tags to show which demos a particular data set, script, file, etc. are used in.  This lets me search in the MacOS finder for a particular demo tag and get all the files associated with it.  I did something similar for customer-specific data, white papers, etc.

My general journals/projects are in a single JMP 14 demo directory.  I have one directory per release.  Since the files are all referencing the same path variables the journals are really tiny.  Each JMP 14 Demo has it's own folder in the JMP 14 Directory that contains the journal (and project), query builder files, and papers, pdf's, etc. that I referenced to make the demo.

Last I made a Folder with aliases to the most current versions of my stock demos.  This folder is on my dock bar so that I can get to the stock demos quickly.  I'll create a similar alias for a customer-specific demo I might be using and put it on the desktop so that there's no chance of one customer seeing anything associated with another customer.

JSL for my path variables below:

Best,

M

// Demo Data Path
Set Path Variable("Demo_Data","/Users/miande/OneDrive - SAS/JMP Demos/Demo Datasets");
Get Path variable("Demo_Data");
Show(Files In Directory( "$Demo_Data" ));

// Demo Database Path
Set Path Variable("Demo_Databases","/Users/miande/OneDrive - SAS/JMP Demos/Demo Databases");
Get Path variable("Demo_Databases");
Show(Files In Directory( "$Demo_Databases" ));

// Customer Data Path
Set Path Variable("Client_Archives","/Users/miande/OneDrive - SAS/Client Archives");
Get Path variable("Client_Archives");
Show(Files In Directory( "$Client_Archives" ));

// Customer Data Path
Set Path Variable("JMP_WhitePapers","/Users/miande/OneDrive - SAS/JMP Marketing and Customer Outreach");
Get Path variable("JMP_WhitePapers");
Show(Files In Directory( "$JMP_WhitePapers" ));