CMS Weekly

8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-24

Stewart Mader, founder of futurechanges.org and author of Wikipatterns brings us 8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki

1. Post a meeting agenda and email the link out once. Attendees can modify the document in place, and if you’re lucky, some agenda items will get resolved before the meeting.

2. Post the meeting minutes and action items. Stewart recommends having the whole team responsible for contributing to the minutes.

3. Manage projects by keeping all relevant documents in one place that can be viewed and modified by all appropriate team members.

4. Compose documents that require the input of more than one person, thus reducing the volume of emails and potential confusion formerly experienced as the file was moved around between participants.

5. Use a wiki for software developers to build the documentation while they build the software.

6. Re-use information when moving to a new project that was similar to the previous one.

7. Post the Employee Handbook. When employees use the comment feature to ask non-confidential questions, the answers are posted on the page so everyone can see the answer, avoiding repeated questions to HR. This should also reduce confusion as to the current version of the handbook if everyone views one common electronic document.

8. In addition to the previous 7 internal-facing uses, you can also use a Wiki for the external facing function of a customer support knowledge base. External users can be encouraged to add content as well, with an internal person moderating the content for quality and accuracy.

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