Sharepoint Wikis

Question

Ok, I've seen a few posts that mention a few other posts about not using SP wikis because they suck.

Since we are looking at doing our wiki in SP, I need to know why we shouldn't do it for a group of 6 automation-developers to document the steps in various automated processes and the changes that have to be made from time to time.

Answer 1

Here are some caveats I came across that will vanish if you use a wiki other than Sharepoint.

Sharepoint lets you create tons of separate wikis, but I'd recommend having one big wiki for everything. My company made a bunch of little wikis for each project/feature, but only admins can create the individual wikis, so if I want to write about something that isn't doesn't match one of the predefined categories, I have to find a manager to create the wiki first.

Secondly, if you use Sharepoint make sure everyone on your staff only uses IE, since Firefox doesn't support the WYSIWIG editor. This is a good thing for most wikis, but makes collaborating difficult in Sharepoint. Imagine editing auto-generated HTML in a tiny little box all day.

Third, try to write up your project documentation in the wiki and resist the temptation to upload Word docs to the Sharepoint library. No point in writing up all your docs twice and watching things get more and more out of sync.

Finally, image support in Sharepoint wikis is terrible. You have to add a file to a document library somewhere and type in the URL. My images were forever getting deleted because they don't seem to make much sense out of context.

Answer 2

I have a much more positive view of Microsoft's Sharepoint Wiki. In many ways it reminds me of FrontPage 98 -- and that was an unfairly maligned product.

The comment about using a list is misguided. Sharepoint Wikis ARE Sharepoint lists, in which each page is a list item with an HTML attachment.

It's true that you can't link into a page, but if the pages are short I don't see that as a problem. SP Wiki makes it very easy to have short pages.

You can manipulate the Wiki attributes from access 2008 if you wish, and you can add attributes to the wiki list items as desired. For example -- do you want categories? Just add them by editing the list. Want specific views? of list items. Create them too.

There's real genius in the way Microsoft built their Wiki framework atop Sharepoint lists -- which are undeniablly well done.

The TRUE drawback of Sharepoint Wiki was mentioned by famerchris. The approach to image management is surprisingly awful. It's such a serious problem that you should consider other Wikis for this reason alone.

There is a convoluted workaround that I use. It takes advantage of the superb Sharepoint support and image editing integrated with Windows Live Writer.

1. Create a SP blog that will hold the images that will be referenced in the wiki.
2. Use Windows Live Writer to post to the wiki-image-blog. Drop your image into WLW, resize it as needed, etc. If you like, use WLW to write your image associated wiki text first draft as well.
3. After you post to the Wiki, copy and paste image and text into the Wiki editor rich text field.

This takes suprisingly little time, far less than any other option I've read of. I admit, it is convoluted.

Other than the image problems I'm pleased and impressed with the product. If only Microsoft had thought harder about images ... if only ...

Answer 3

The default wiki included with Sharepoint doesn't support common wiki features well at all. There is no way to edit a single section of a page, and no way to link directly to a particular section on another page. The backend is in HTML so you lose the ability to edit in plaintext using simple syntax. The diff feature can't span multiple versions. Poor cross browser support of WYSIWYG editing. No way to auto-insert a table of contents...

There are, however, other wiki add-ins for Sharepoint which I can't categorically dismiss, for instance Confluence makes an add-in for Sharepoint. I haven't evaluated this software myself, and Confluence is somewhat expensive ($1,200 for 25 user license) although if you are already on Sharepoint I sense large corporate coffers :P. There also appear to be some free add-ins like CKS Enhanced Wiki but that appears to have a lot of the same problems mentioned above.