PCD File and Document Management

General file and document storage conventions

The following sections give a quick guide to PCD usage. A more extensive and general description of general IHE practices can be found at Tool Usage.

Wiki

The wiki site you are looking at (wiki.ihe.net) is the most generally useful source of IHE information. The category pages and will lead you, directly or indirectly, to most of the IHE PCD information you will need.

You should learn your way around the wiki, and in particular you should learn to edit pages to add your own insights and information! See the Help pages (left hand navigation panel) for the simple directions. Don't be timid, the wiki doesn't lose anything so the worst than can happen in a disastrous editing session is that the page can be quickly and easily reverted to its previous state.M

Note in particular that you can upload and incorporate images in the pages. Pictures are great for getting your ideas accross and making the pages look more interesting.

Besides graphics files, you can also upload PDF files, a good way to give your colleagues access to information of long-term usefulness. Most other file formats cannot be uploaded to the wiki (such as Word .doc files). For these, the FTP site is a more appropriate place.

FTP site

Files of other types, e.g. .doc or .xls files, especially ones that are being actively worked on.

The organization of the FTP site is a bit complex; see PCD FTP Site Map. For most committee members, the most useful part of the directory tree in day-to-day work is under the Patient_Care_Devices/Profiles directory. Here there are subtrees for working documents related to each of the profiles, such as DEC and RTM.

Google Groups

Each working group in PCD has a Google Group (see IHE PCD Google Groups for a list). If you are not yet enrolled in a Google Group for one of your Google groups, the web site will give you a chance to request being put in the group. The group administrator will add you in, usually the same day.

The Google Group gives you a way to address emails to the whole group, and also allows you to upload working files for the group.

The PCD consensus seems to be that while a working group is preparing the file for wider circulation, it is reasonable to work with it on the Google Groups File page; when it is ready for the wider PCD community, you should load it into the appropriate folder in the FTP site. The recommended way to do this is to email the document to one of the co-chairs or Manny Furst, who will take care of that.

Naming convention for file names-IHE-PCD

Revised 11/30/2005

In order to track documents through multiple versions and changing names we have adopted the following convention. This convention is in preparation for Proposed Profile name changes – e.g., two profiles may be combined or a profile may be split into two. The naming convention will work for other documents, but may not necessarily require version numbers.


Document File Names (YYYYMMDDFileName-Version-Initials)
Document file names begin with the date (YYYYMMDD) of the first document to have this name. If the name is changed the date will be updated. To provide ways to easily track changes:
1.	The Profile Tracking Table will be updated by the chair (for Year 1 this is a spreadsheet at ftp://ftp.ihe.net/Patient_Care_Devices/IHEPCDyr1-2006-2007/PlanningCommitteeYr1/YYYYMMDDProfileTrackingTable-Vn-THC.xls), where n is the version.
2.	If the Profile Proposal supersedes earlier proposal(s) the author should provide the previous document’s name near the top of the profile.
3.	If the document is not a profile, follow this convention to the extent it is relevant.
4.	The exception to this convention is for documents placed in a meeting folder (see below).


Use an abbreviated form of the document title to follow the date the profile was created with this name.
The version number follows. Versions begin again at 1 if the name changes.
The author’s initials (iii) complete the naming convention (please use 3 initials if you are comfortable doing so).

The result is					YYYYMMDDProfileProposal-Vi-iii

We ask that you use 
	Capitals to start words and avoid spaces
The hyphen ( - ) rather than underscore ( _ ) for clarity

Please leave the originals in the ftp folder to provide an historical record; a committee co-chair has the responsibility to remove or archive older documents.

Example:
Proposed Profile: Access vital signs from any location, view and process vital signs from any location 

The file name becomes: 		20051109VitalSignsMonitor-v1-BM.doc

After receiving comments and participating in committee discussion, the next version with the same name would be labeled and posted by the author as:						20051109AccessVitalSigns-v2-BM  

Note: the date at the beginning of the file name is unchanged.

If the document’s name were to change, then the file name will change and the date that begins the file name will also change. For example:

(for illustration only)			20060122AccessPhysiologic Data-v1-BM

Note to profile authors: When a name change occurs, the profile itself should include a record of this change with an entry near the top of the newly named document to refer to the preceding document. In addition, an entry in the Notes column of the tracking table, YYYYMMDDProfileTrackingTable-Vn-iii.xls. When a new profile or a new version is posted to the ftp site, please notify the committee through the listserv.

Please note: while everyone with access to the file can copy/download any document, modify it and distribute it as an attachment to emails (e.g., distributed over the committee listserv), only the author should edit the original and post the latest version. 

Agendas and Supporting Documents
We are placing the agenda and supporting documents in a separate folder under
ftp://ftp.rsna.org/IHE/Patient_Care_Devices/IHEPCDyr1-2006-2007/PlanningCommitteeYr1/PCMeetings/		for the Planning Committee in the Year 1 cycle
and	
ftp://ftp.rsna.org/IHE/Patient_Care_Devices/IHEPCDyr1-2006-2007/TechnicalCommitteeYr1/			for the Technical Committee in the Year 1 cycle

Within this folder, the agenda will carry the file name
					00-YYYYMMDDPCAgenda
Or 					00-YYYYMMDDTCAgenda

And the supporting documents will use a two character numbering system
					nn- YYYYMMDDDocumentFileName-Initials

If the document is a copy of a document found elsewhere on the ftp site, it will retain its name, with the only change the addition of the preceding nn-.