Tips and Tricks for Naming a Matter

When you create a matter, you can name the matter using any convention you choose. However, there are a few considerations you should be aware of: 

• When viewing matters in a list, information in the other columns can help you identify specific matters, like client name, matter type, date created, etc. Because of this, you don't need to include these elements into the matter name.
• When using the Quick Search bar to find a matter, the search will attempt to match the matter name, so the name you assign should be unique and descriptive enough that your search can find it. For example, if you generally only have one matter per client, then using the client name in the matter name could make sense. But if you have many matters for the same client, this could make it difficult to find matters. Bear in mind that the Quick Search also shows you results for contacts that match the search term, so if you can't find it by matter name you can always search by contact name and then open the contact record to see linked matters.
• Use a naming convention that will give you a lot of diversity in the names. This will help you to identify an matter from a list without having to open it up to find out what it's about.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind about how matters are identified:

• Actionstep will automatically assign a unique numeric ID to each matter when it is created. You can also use this ID to search for matters.
• Each matter has an optional File reference field, which is particularly useful when importing a matter from a previous non-Actionstep system because it allows you to cross-reference the matter ID in Actionstep and the ID in the old system. This File Reference is also searchable using the Quick Search bar, so it can be useful in distinguishing matters when many of them have similar names.