Feb 22,2007
My last post introduced you to Wiki’s in Sharepoint 2007 ( MOSS 2007 ). I have since had the time to explore this feature in greater detail, and to be honest was very impressed by what i discovered. I was a little apprehensive about the wiki feature for the simple reason that being part of the Sharepoint platform might have encouraged over-engineering. However aside for the rich text editor ( which makes the process of adding content that much easier ) the basic layout and functionality of the wiki hasn’t changed. So if you are a contributor on Wikipedia you needn’t worry.
The major benefit for corporates of having Wiki as a part of the new Sharepoint Portal is two-fold. The first obviously is that now corporates have the ability to tap into and facilitate the creation of information using tacit knowledge. The second is making use of Sharepoint features like security controls allows them to impose a greater level of control that doesn’t exist in wiki’s like Wikipedia ( a thought that scares them half to death i’m sure ).
So what does Sharepoint allow you to do with the wiki?
- Wiki pages can be created under any group or library , if for example you have a particularly interesting post on your Blog ( Another new feature of MOSS 2007 ) you could spin this off into a Wiki and have other people collaborate on it.
- Permissions can be set at a page level, which means you can restrict which pages other users have access to within the wiki structure ( something i haven’t heard off in most other wiki’s )
- You can also add Meta-data to your wiki pages, as with any other document library. So you can showcase pictures ( for eg ).
- You can also set e-mail alerts on your Wiki pages.
It also offers other features than we’ve come to expect from all Wiki’s :
- Interlinking / Creating new pages using double brackets ( [[ ]] ).
- History tracking of the document. The added advantage here is that being incorporated on the Sharepoint platform you can actually pull the persons contact information of the exchange server.
- Lastly, versioning and reverts of wiki pages.
If you are interested in the product i’d suggest downloading a free version and experimenting with it.
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26 Responses for "Wikis in SharePoint 2007 - Part 2"
We have been piloting the use of Wikis quite heavily within our internal MOSS 2007 pilot, and although your points above about flexibility and ease are true, we’ve discovered two annoying functional holes (especiaslly for people who’ve used other wiki-based KM products in the past).
Firstly, the fact that there are no templates for wiki pages. In other words, the fact that when you create a new wiki page in MOSS all yiu ever ger presented with is the default blank page. When you consider the amount of work which MS have done on this in the documeht library space (with Content Types etc) this seems a strange omission.
Secondly the use of metadata to categorise/classify wiki postings. Certainly you can add custom columns to the wiki library and they do show up at the bottom of the post (albeit in a rather bold and clunky fashion) but they aren’t usable as filters or active links, Again compare this to the “categories” fucntion within the blog template, and you see how this feature could have worked (and does work in a number of the other non-MS wiki products).
All in all, not too bad, but MOSS 2007 wiki still very much has the feeling of a v1.0 product release.
We’ve just started experimenting with the wiki feature of MOSS 2007, and you’re right this does have a feeling of a v1.0 product. I’m just glad Microsoft has woken up to the power of wiki’s and blogs in the corporate sphere.
Thanks for the comment though. Would love to hear more about what work your team is doing with MOSS 2007.
[...] thats available on MOSS 2007 ( Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 ) , You can read them here and [...]
How do you set page-level permissions in the wiki? We have one setup and I don’t notice that feature anywhere? Must it be enabled somehow? I’d really like to use that feature.
David,
From what i’ve seen in MOSS 2007 you can set permission at a page level. However the process of doing so involves getting into the document level view of the wiki. As you know each wiki page is stored as a HTML file in a document library with the title of your wiki. You need to go to the page you want and then use the “manage permissions” button to direct yourself to the permissions page. By default the wiki inherits the permissions of the parent site.
Hope this helps…
- Arjun.
Hi,
has anyone tried doing local links, i.e. a hyperlink to an anchor on the same page with SP 2007 Wiki???? Does anyone know the syntax? I hope it can be done otherwise page level TOC’s and linking wont work and it is pretty limited without this!
hoping for a revalation
cheers
Ross
Ross,
I’ve tried something along those same lines, like i mentioned earlier this seems like a very 1.0 application. A TOC is critical for document level navigation. If someone has managed to overcome this issue would appreciate you posting the solution here..
thanks,
Arjun.
I am also interested in learning if you can link to anchors within a page. Please let me know if this is possible.
[...] thats available on MOSS 2007 ( Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 ) , You can read them here and [...]
Hello, I was wondering if anyone ever figured how to do local links within a Wiki page? When I try it using standard named anchor syntax for a section and then try to reference that section, Sharepoint sticks in an absolute url making the link become a link to an editing page.
I know.. its a problem that plagues a lot of us.. Still haven’t figured out a way around this..
We really need wiki page templates!
Anybody knows how to customize all the wiki pages?
There are some real annoyances in the wiki editor that I have found.
1. Lack of browse options when inserting either an image or hyperlink (I really can’t believe how they missed that one).
2. Lack of templates.
3. Inabaility to paste an image.
To recap, the following are the limitations ive found so far with SP2007’s wiki implementation:
1) No Templates - all pages must be created from scratch or pasted in from a word doc or something. What would be nice is a separate designated document libary (or even documents in the same library as the wiki but designated templates) that you can pick from a drop down upon page creation
2) No Categories - the simple metadataing allowed is pretty woeful. Nothing approaching categories as in say mediawiki and should be relatively simple to add in i would have thought
3) No Persona Links - MS has presencelinks through out sharepoint. This is integrated with either IM or LCS and provides a green (or orange) presence ball after a users name with options to immediately start an IM, voice, or email collaboration with them, or jump to their my site. They could have added something like [[@Ross Nelson]] whould would appear on a wiki page exactly like other presence links in SP. Brilliant opportunity missed.
4) No Intrapage links - You cant create a link that jumps within the page or inside another page. the only way to do it is to handhack the underlying html, which is not on for novice editors.
5) No Target pages for hyperlinks - if you add a hyperlink to an external url, you cant specify a target window for it to appear in. It just comes up in the same pane as the wiki in the browser.
6) No TOCs - There is no table of contents capability, as there are no sectional heading designators to create a TOC from. TOCS greatly help intra page navigation and assist with large amounts of content. See any serious wikipedia page, like one on a country for instance, divded into many sub headings and very long.
7) No Sectional Editing - as there is no section headings (i.e. ==My Heading==) there is no cue for doing sectional editing as in mediawiki. Sectional editing is invaluable with large wiki pages as you dont want to tawl through miles of content to find where to edit, just the bit you were currently looking at.
Given all the thinks SP2007 wikis do right (single sign on security, admin facilities, seamless integration with general collaboration tool, decent look and feel), if the above 7 things could be added it would be a true contender in the wiki world. At them moment it tends to feel a bit like a last minute effort to just put a stake in the wiki arena. Lets hope we see a new wiki site template without having to wait for Sharepoint 2010!
cheers
Ross Nelson
I put together a workaround so that bookmark anchors/intrapage links work on sharepoint 2007 wiki pages. Check it out here: http://www.pratie.com/playground/misc/wikianchor.asp
Thanks for the comment Tom, will try implementing the workaround you suggested.
Jack…
Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts…..
If you just use the root relative url to the wiki page, you can get anchor links to work:
http://www.sharepointblogs.com/toth/archive/2007/10/31/using-named-anchors-in-sharepoint-wiki-pages.aspx
Having end users try and construct anchor links using the root relative URL might prove difficult. The JS workaround I posted above makes things a little easier for end users. There’s also the community kit for sharepoint with an enhanced wiki: http://www.codeplex.com/CKS.
Sounds perfect to me. I have read this post with a great pleasure. You should write much more often.
Hi,
We have something like wiki (Tips and Tricks) at our organization.
All the data is plain HTML files (not aspx files)
I want to put it into the sharepoint’s wiki.
Could you help me how to do this?
Arun,
The best way of doing this is by copying the text and pasting it on the wiki page. This is a fast way of accomplishing what you need to do. You might have to spend a little time formatting the text before you get it to a form you want.
Best of luck!
[...] Wiki’s in SharePoint 2007 - Part 2 [...]
[...] workaround: link to bookmark anchor on same page in sharepoint 2007 wiki http://arjunthomas.com/2007/02/22/wikis-in-sharepoint-2007-part-2/ There’s also the community kit for sharepoint with an enhanced wiki: http://www.codeplex.com/CKS. [...]
Never mind that it is trivial, in the big picture, even if it is true. ,
Not sure if people use it, probably because there is no driving factor now, but if google starts indexing that metadata, we’ll see more videos have metadata injected in. ,
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