FTP In/Out Folder Name Best Practices

Question

What best practices (if any) do you adhere to regarding setting up outgoing and incoming folders for your FTP clients? We typically use "outgoing" and "incoming", but no matter how you phrase the direction, it can be interpreted in two ways, depending on which end the names are relative to.

For example, an "incoming" folder on my end can be meant for files the client sends to me, hence incoming for me. But it can also be meant for files I send to the client, incoming to them. Typically, these always are relative to the party's side on which the files reside. But no matter how clear it should be, it always seems to cause confusion for some parties (maybe because they've historically always made their names relative to their clients).

And no matter what options I come up with, they can always be interpreted differently. Some examples:

• incoming/outgoing
• send/receive
• upload/download
• to/from

Thoughts?

Answer 1

In this case probably you don't want to use a verb as the meaning of the action will always depend on the reader location. Why don't you use something along the line of

 to_server/to_client

the action is always towards something "to_" but the object receiving the action is clearer.

Answer 2

I ran into this issue with my users a while back. I found using a very plain and short name solved this issue. Since we use our company name and client names, I will make up an example.

Lets say you work for Xero Yellow Zipcode, Inc. One of your client is Bob's Trucking Specialists. I try to keep the abbreviations as simple as possible, so Xero Yellow Zipcode, Inc., becomes XYZ and Bob's Trucking Specialists becomes BTS.

On the FTP site, I create two folders: XYZ2BTS BTS2XYZ

or you could use lower case letters.

xyz2bts bts2xyz

Anything an employee of XYZ is goint to send to BTS would be put into "XYZ2BTS". Anything we are going to receive from BTS will be in the BTS2XYZ.

On the client side, an employee of BTS wanting to send something to XYZ would put it in the folder BTS2XYZ.

Is this has completely eliminated the confusion for all our employees and clients as well.

I hope this helps.