Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Figure 1

Using Wikis in Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0

What is a Windows SharePoint Services Wiki site?

A Wiki, which in the Hawaiian language means “quick”, is a website that allows visitors toeasily add, remove or edit content on the site, often without the need for registration.Content on the site is often‘policed’ by a community of contributors, who have thecapability of editing inappropriateor incorrect information. The mostpowerful element of Wiki sites isthe ease of creating and editingweb sites, enabling non-technicalusers to wholly participate inknowledge sharing or collaboration efforts through Wiki sites. Within Windows SharePointServices, a wiki site also enables the capability of viewing versions of a wiki site entry,along with when changes were made and who made those changes. Users have thecapability of ‘rolling back’ to a previous version if updates are considered incorrect orinappropriate. Users with Full Control permissions, often administrators of the wiki site,also have the capability to tightly control who has the capability to edit wiki site entries,choosing to allow only a certain group of users to edit a wiki entry, while allowingeverybody else to read the wiki site.

How should I think of using a Wiki in my business?

Wikis were originally used by businesses as a primary knowledge sharing tool foremployees within the corporate firewall. However, with the simplicity of wiki technologyenabling mainstream adoption by users on the public Internet, Wikis are beginning toevolve from a corporate knowledge management system into a place for generalcollaboration. Topics such as meeting agendas, marketing documents or other internaldocuments such as official job descriptions, as shown in Figure 1 can be created by a mixof team members from within a company or external vendors and consultants. The usesof Wikis within the business environment are varied and could be considered a solution

www.microsoft.com/sharepointapps

Tips and TricksUsing Wikis

Figure 2

Figure 4Figure 3

whenever a business need calls for multiple users collaborating openly on a single set of text documents. To read more about how Wikis can be used in a business environment,refer to the article “Using Blogs and Wikis in Business” at:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/techref/blogs.mspx.Additionally, the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team has their own blogbuilt athttp://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint.

How do I edit an existing Wiki page?

Editing an existing Wiki page is extremely simple for the non-technical user. Whenvisiting any page that is available for editing, the ‘Edit’ button will appear in the top rightof the screen. The user simply clicks on the button and makes the changes necessary toimprove the wiki site. Within the doucment, there are multiple formatting tools available,which are similar to those found in Microsoft Office Word 2007. Figure 4 (next page)shows a small subset of the capabiliites shown on the user interface for creating and / orediting pages within the wiki site. While editing a page, users may choose to ‘check out’the site, which precludes other users from making changes at the same time to aparticular site. They can then ‘check in’ the changes they’ve made, which enables themto type comments on what changes were made and why.

How do I begin to create a Wiki page?

After your IT team has created the base Wikisite, any user of the site has the capability of creating the

first

wiki page. When firstdeployed, the Wiki site displays a generic“Welcome to your wiki site” page, as shown inFigure 2. The easiest way to get started is toclick ‘Edit’ in the top right corner, and change the text to what is appropriate for the site,for example editing the text to thatshown in Figure 1. To create a newwiki page, the easiest thing to do iscreate a

link

by typing [[NAME OF NEW PAGE]] (include the double brackets). When ‘OK’

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, andevents depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name,email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

Figure 5

is clicked after editing is completed, a new hyperlink is created as “NAME OF NEW PAGE”.All a user has to do is click on this hyperlink to create their new page. Note that a newpage is not

created

until a hyperlink is clicked. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0designates hyperlinks with pages that have not yet been created as having a dashedunderline beneath the hyperlink (See Figure 3). By clicking on this dashed hyperlink, auser generates a new page within the Wiki as shown in Figure 4. Users create the text,using formatting tools similar to Office Word 2007 and then clicks “Create” to save thenew Wiki page.

How do I track the history of edits made on the Wiki site?

One of the more powerful features of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Wiki site is theability for users to view who made what changes to a page and when. At a first glance, itis possible to see on the main page which registered user made the last modification to asite. At the bottom of each page is text stating when and who last modified thedocument. For example “Lastmodified at 2/22/2007 4:21PM by ToniPoe”. In addition, any user can clickon the History button at the top of thepage to view a series of screenshowing color coded additions anddeletions to a text, including thevarious versions of the document, asshown in Figure 5. On the left handside of the screen are the versions of the page, in this case version 1.0through version 6.0. By clicking oneach of these versions, the user sees the changes that were made from the prior version,as well as who made the changes and at what time. The

gold

highlighted words areadditions while the crossed out

grey

words are deletions. In addition, a user can view asummary of

all

changes made to a particular site by clicking the button “Version History”

www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

iii