The minimum viable deck name
A good deck name answers three questions: what is it, who is it for, and which version is current? Everything else is optional. A format like 'Subject — Audience — YYYY-MM' is enough for most teams.
Version control without the version soup
- Use dates, not ordinals. 'final_v3' tells nobody anything; '2026-08' tells everyone when it was last current.
- Reserve 'draft' for work in progress and remove it before the deck enters the library.
- Archive the old version when you replace it, do not just overwrite it.
Let search do the heavy lifting
SMRT Slides indexes slide content, so the deck name only needs to get someone close. Keep names short and consistent, then rely on slide-level search for the rest.