The SharePoint Wiki is a straight out of the box solution. It’s not only easy to implement, but the available features will be sufficient for almost all standard applications. Before getting to the features, let’s take a look at Wikis in general.
The word comes from ‘wikiwiki’ which in Hawaiian means ‘quick’. The relevance here is that it’s fast and easy to use to create or edit the site’s inter-connected pages. It’s not required to know HTML markup or be familiar with the site’s structure. Way it works is that the user adds a link where required, even if the link target page does not exist. The page can be created later by clicking on the link.
This kind of capability is very useful when the site is supposed to use user generated content (UGC) and has a large number of users creating and editing pages. It needs a huge and complex database to hold all the data with new pages being created constantly and multiple versions of each page as changes are made. Software to setup this kind of site will have to very powerful and flexible.
Many dedicated solutions are available in the market that can fit the bill. But given the concept of making things simple for collaborative purposes, there’s one particular solution that fits the bill especially well. That solution is the out of the box SharePoint Wiki, a functionality that comes with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server.
The main aim of this server is to facilitate collaborative efforts within and from outside a company’s network, by setting up portals, websites and applications. Different users can be granted separate access permissions and it allows for sharing data and collaboration on documents and projects between employees, customers, suppliers and others on an enterprise level. Given such functionality, it’s no big surprise that the SharePoint Wiki is a perfect match as a component in this server.
Creating it is much the same as creating any other type of site, requiring a name and giving access permissions to specific users. If a ‘Wiki’ is selected as the site type, then some additional elements become visible. This includes a toolbar for easy access to page editing and keeping track of previous edits to the page. Another bar lists the latest pages that have been edited.
Also note that it’s possible to create either a Library or site. The library offers 2 pages (home page and help page) by default. When a site is created, it includes the library and uses the library’s home page as the default page.
If the SharePoint Wiki is part of a bigger site, the user permissions can be inherited as is from the site. If it needs any special user access permissions, these can be specified separately. That’s about all there is to it, and this simplicity in creation and use is one of the main reasons why it is an ‘out of the box’ solution.
Knowledge-worker components and tools to assist with Sharepoint Web Parts, Sharepoint List, Sharepoint Wiki, Calendar Web Part, Sharepoint Search & Sharepoint Calendar.
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