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Comment by SenHeng | Hacker News Reader

> Yeah I get that I can do google search and find docs wherever they live. But I can't find docs if I don't know that they exist.

To illustrate this point more. I used to work in a company where everyone had to submit their timesheet via docs. And if you did not keep a link or copy or whatever they call it of your own sheet, it's essentially impossible to search for it, because now there are 1000s of identically named documents.

It also happens when legal tries to share a generically named file with you and you lose the link, so you search for it and find a file that looks like it, only to realise that is HR's own special copy.

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This. I wish I had thought of your example first.

We have service agreements that go through revisions. We copy the whole directory when there's a new release to ensure we don't lose old templates. At that point search on service agreements brings up a bunch of identically named documents in a listing that does not distinguish the directory location. It's actually caused us to send the wrong doc on several occasions.

Google if you are listening please fix this. Just do what everyone else does. You don't have to be creative.

Docs has revision history.

For several of the concerns listed, I'm surprised to see how people are using the app.

Similar for asking every employee of a company to track their time in same name documents?

Perhaps poor processes and poor tool-to-solution matches contribute?

Arguably then, the documentation needs improvement. Most people learned the ropes on MS Word, and never bothered to unlearn habits/explore whatever else docs has to offer. So whenever docs has a feature that isn't present in word, I wouldn't expect people to know it's there

So they're using it wrong?

I wouldn't call this an issue w/ google docs, just pick a consistent naming scheme like timesheet_john_smith_august_2015. Or even better, just make it so only John Smith can see John Smith's timesheets through sharing preferences.

Fantastic, so we're back from namespaces (directories) to prefixes.

That sounds more like a process issue than a technology issue. The tools to manage this exist in the tech but mixing access, not restricting access, and other issues that persist in file shares, shared email boxes, mirroring AD access for new users, etc are the same issues as an old gmail that gets 1000 spam emails a day; it's a mess that needs to be audited and overhauled which is easiest by jumping to a new system/platform when able.

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