Less-is-more Blog by Pierre Khawand

Question & Answer: What wiki platforms would you recommend for getting started with wikis?

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Many wikis are available on the market today and they offer a wide range of capabilities. Some are hosted solutions and well suited for small teams who want to get started quickly and easily without IT support while others are enterprise solutions that can be setup within the company firewall and would require IT support.  

Here are some examples of wikis that we mention in some of our collaboration workshops:  

• PBWiki (http://www.pbwiki.com/)
• Central Desktop (http://www.centraldesktop.com/)
• Social Text (http://www.socialtext.com/)
• Confludence (http://www.atlassian.com/)
• Twiki (http://www.twiki.org/ and http://www.twiki.net/)  

Many of the above wikis have free trials available and Twiki for instance is an open source solution which you can download and install on your server for free.

For an exhaustive list of wikis (more than 100 of them) and comprehensive feature comparison, refer to http://www.wikimatrix.org/  

By the way, if you are already using Microsoft SharePoint, one of the templates that are available is a wiki template. This allows you to create a new team site that is a wiki. While this is not a full featured wiki like the above mentioned platforms, it can serve your basic needs and can be a good starting point until a full featured wiki platform is in place.   

Additional Resources  

• Recording of the Structured Wikis at Work by Peter Thoenylunch & learn webinar at the "Accomplishing more with less" group on Facebook
   
• Are you still wondering how a wiki can help your team better collaborate? 
   
• Wikimatrix.org for wiki comparisons

Are you still wondering how a wiki can help your team better collaborate?

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As we continue to promote collaboration technologies (such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint) and help teams use these technologies to reduce their reliance on e-mail and on meetings, we are always looking for easy ways to introduce these concepts to first time users.

This video "Wikis in Plain English" by Commoncraft continues to be top on our list when it comes to explaining what a wiki is and how it can be useful:

Even though the video is about a camping trip, the same concepts apply to any initiative or project in the business world! So instead of adding to the e-mail overload, get your wiki going and get your work done with less e-mail!

Additional resources

Lunch & Learn Webinar: Structured Wikis at Work- Enterprise 2.0 in Action

Emerging Collaboration Technologies: Blogs, Wikis, SharePoint, and more!

Question and Answer: When should I use Microsoft SharePoint and when should I use a wiki?

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This question comes up often during our workshops. Participants see that both platforms can help with document collaboration and information sharing, and they start to wonder which platform is more appropriate for their needs.

While this can be a long discussion, I am only going to provide a few key insights here, and please add your comments below so others can benefit from your experience.

What is SharePoint best at?

• More appropriate for managing "documents."
• More appropriate for managing calendars and tasks that are structured.
• More suitable when you want to setup several levels of user permissions.
• More suitable when you are using Windows and so is your team/company and therefore integration with Windows, with Microsoft Office Applications, and Exchange/Outlook is desired or mandatory.

What are wikis best at?

• When you want to co-create content at a more granular level (quickly and easily update sentences and paragraphs, expand and branch into new pages).
• When you are at the early stage of an idea or a project and flexibility and innovation is more important than structure.
• When everyone is on equal footing and involvement/engagement are key as opposed to having a hierarchal structure and a structured review process.
• When users are using a variety of platforms (Windows, Macs, others).

Having said the above, it is common to see teams use both tools. Some projects and initiative require the flexibility and ease of use of a wiki while others require the more structured approach that SharePoint offers. Sometimes it is easier to start a project using a wiki and then when the project develops further and formal documents start to take shape, SharePoint can then be introduced.

More resources to check out

• Microsoft SharePoint Techniques workshop
• Emerging Collaboration Technologies workshop (blogs, wikis, SharePoint)
• www.wikimatrix.org for comparing wikis