Introducing the Enterprise Wiki Software Guide
Choosing the right wiki for your team, project, or organization is essential. The right tool will help catalyze adoption, encourage continued use, and help people get their work done well. So how can you find the best enterprise wiki for your needs?
I’m publishing the Enterprise Wiki Software Guide to help you get started. The guide contains descriptions and screenshots of twelve wikis that are designed with business and organizational needs in mind. These tools contain such capabilities and features as:
- Workspaces – organize information by group, project, product, etc.
- Permissions – set read and edit permissions for individual pages or entire spaces.
- User Management/LDAP – integrate with central user stores, like Active Directory
- Notifications – get notified by email or RSS when a page is updated.
- Design & Branding – match the look and feel of your website, intranet, etc.
- Discussion – threaded discussion can take place right alongside the content on wiki pages. For example, if you’re using the wiki for your employee handbook, someone can ask a question, clarify a policy, or suggest a refinement.
- Industry-Standard Databases – Oracle, MySQL, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server
- Templates – placeholder text people can use to spark activity on newly created pages.
I’ll continue to add more information on the products already listed, and add new products to the list. I’ll also be adding more features to the guide as well, so that you can rate and share your experiences with these tools. In the meantime, you’re welcome to post your thoughts on the guide and listed tools in the comments section of the Enterprise Wiki Software Guide.
Mark Roseman says:
Jun 24th, 2009
Hi Stewart, thanks very much for putting this guide together – a very useful resource! I put up a blog post pointing to it, as well as talking a bit about pricing models for the tools you included (and ours) and in general about different wiki pricing models. http://blog.courseforum.com/2009/06/enterprise-wiki-software-and-pricing.html
Martin Seibert says:
Jun 28th, 2009
Hi Stewart,
I am missing real open source alternatives in your list. Did you leave them out by purpose? What about Foswiki (TWiki-fork) or XWiki?
Best regards
Martin Seibert
Stewart Mader says:
Jul 1st, 2009
Martin,
I’ll be regularly updating the list with other tools over the coming weeks.
Regards,
Stewart
Don Barry says:
Jul 6th, 2009
Foswiki has all of these things (it’s the TWiki programmers, code, and community
under a renaming forced by a trademark troll and threatened lawsuits).
I’ve deployed it with skins to match two university themes, and it has one of
the largest plugin collections of any wiki system. It also features RSS/Atom/LDAP,
granular access control lists, and enormous customizability. And of course, best
of all it’s free software, with a democratic, self-governing community.
-Don
Martin Seibert says:
Jul 6th, 2009
What a praise!
coria says:
Jul 11th, 2009
yes, i also strong recommond TWiki/FOSWiki to the list