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Editor's Note: Microsoft discontinued the wiki option in Teams in January 2024. At the time of the announcement, it advised migrating wiki content to the OneNote notebook also found in Teams. You can read more here.
When most people hear the word “wiki” they think of Wikipedia and similar online encyclopedias. But there is more to wikis than that. Wikipedia, for all its success, is just one application of wiki technology.
Microsoft defines a wiki as “a site that is designed for groups of people to quickly capture and share ideas by creating simple pages and linking them together.”
Within that simple statement is the central power of using wiki technology to foster collaboration. Here’s what you need to know about wikis and how they can help your team and organization.
What Is a Wiki?
In short, a wiki is a website where the content is contributed and edited by any and all members of the team.
Wiki editing is done directly in a web browser without the need for any special editing tools. It is quick and easy and intuitive to use. But the real power comes from the fact that anyone, with the right permissions, can contribute content to the wiki, meaning that the development of a wiki is driven by the community of people who use it rather than an individual or company.
The ‘anyone can edit’ aspect of wikis is often held up as a barrier to their use due to the misconception that they will be inherently inaccurate. In fact, the opposite is true because wikis tend to be self-policing; everything is open to review by the whole community, allowing subject matter experts to comment, challenge, change and contribute quickly and easily.
Conversations around changes are visible and trackable — and changes can easily be rolled back if needed. This reduces duplication of effort and means that the information presented is more likely to be timely and accurate.
Another misconception around wikis is they turn into a wild wild west, where knowledge workers run rampant with little to no supervision. The self-policing aspects of the wiki usually prevent this from happening, but with ownership typically falling to the person who first identified the need and set up the site, governance and maintenance can be developed down the line on an as needed basis.
Related Article: Reboot Knowledge Management for the Post-Pandemic Workplace
How Do I Use a Wiki?
Unlike a webpage, you don’t need to have everything ready and completed before you publish. Often, the best way to start a wiki space is to build a framework of the information you want to include and then let others fill in the blanks by contributing their own content. This allows the wiki to develop naturally and helps build a sense of ownership among those who contribute.
But a wiki is more than just a place to take notes and capture ideas. It can be used to track and manage multiple activities. For example, in my book, “Wiki: Grown Your Own for Fun and Profit,” I relate how on one project with a local government team, we used a wiki for the following activities:
- Collaborative knowledge capture
- Planning
- Content creation, editing and review
- Document and image archive
- Facilities planning
- Contacts directory
- Publishing source for an external website
- Interactive media source
- Event planning
- Meeting planner
- Email replacement
- Marketing
As you can see, there is a lot you can do with a wiki. In fact, the potential of a wiki platform is only limited by the imagination of those who use it.
The first item on that list is collaborative knowledge capture. Wikis are so great for capturing institutional knowledge within the team, I recommend that any team has its own wiki space where it can document what each member does, the processes and workflows, contact details and links to relevant business systems.
On a recent project, we also included on our wiki information for external teams, such as our team members’ skills and when and how they could be engaged to provide help. This had a measurable positive impact on cross-functional collaboration.
Wikis are also useful at a corporate level for things such as onboarding processes, latest news, event planning and other instances where information needs to be updated regularly.
Related Article: How to Develop an Internal Content Ecosystem
Where Do I Get a Wiki?
There are a lot of choices out there. A quick online search for “wiki software” returned a list of around 40 options, andt he wiki matrix comparison site lists 81 examples of wiki software.
But don’t get overwhelmed: chances are, you already have one in-house. Many development, knowledge management and communications platforms already have a wiki capability built in.
If you are using Microsoft’s Sharepoint platform, for instance, then you are already using a wiki — though in a limited way. Any Team Site in Sharepoint is a wiki, and you can start adding new basic wiki pages from there. These new pages will be stored in the Site Pages library.
The larger your group, the more capabilities you may want to add. Microsoft recommends that enterprise-level wikis be created as their own site collection within the existing Sharepoint instance. To do so, select the menu choices to create a new subsite, and under the Publishing tab in the template section, select the “Enterprise Wiki” option. From here, you can set up permissions and manage groups that have access to edit the wiki.
If you want to have similar capabilities to set permissions, record page history and manage incoming links for a smaller team level wiki, you can do that by accessing the default Wiki Page Library from the Apps selection under Settings.
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Bear in mind, you will need to have permission to create a wiki site, library or pages in Sharepoint. However, if a site has already been shared with you and you have permission to edit it, you most likely have permission to create a wiki within that site.
Wikis in a Microsoft Environment
One of the quickest ways to try out wiki functionality in a Microsoft environment is in the Teams communications platform. This capability has often been overlooked, but when it is engaged it becomes a powerful way for members of a Teams channel to collaborate or share information — and one I’ve often recommended because finding information posted to the Teams wiki page is a lot easier than scrolling back through multiple message threads to find that nugget of information you need.
To add a wiki to a Teams channel, just select your group’s channel and check out the list of tab names at the top. Select the Add a Tab (+ ) option and then pick “wiki” from the tab gallery. Give your wiki a name, and it will then be ready for use. It really is that easy and takes just a few seconds to set up and get going.
Related Article: Governance May Be a 4-Letter Word, But Your Content Still Needs It
Next Steps With Your Wiki
Once you have set up a wiki, developed a framework and started to build content, there are steps to consider, especially for larger enterprise applications, such as organization, techniques for growing adoption and usage, on-going wiki maintenance and management. All topics worthy of future articles.
But in the meantime, I suggest pulling together a small group of potential contributors within your team, setting up a quick basic wiki page and start collaborating. Who knows where it will lead.
