You’ve Got (Way Too Much) Mail.
You know you’ve been there. You open your email inbox only to find a string of emails, replies and forwards regarding something as trivial as a meeting agenda. And because everyone involved has made a change to the original document you sent out, you hunt through trying to find the most recent copy because you’re in charge of the meeting and it starts in…5 min! Ugh.
There must be a better way, you say. And there is. Stewart Mader of Future Changes and author of wikipatterns gave a keynote presentation at the Web Content Conference this morning showing us how wikis can save the day where more familiar tools like email have failed us.
Many of us are drowning in email. What was once a “cool new thing” that made communication faster and easier is actually making us less efficient today. We have come to rely on it as our sole communication tool, when in fact there are better tools for collaboration, documentation and knowledge sharing.
If you’re new to wikis – or you think a wiki is an encyclopedia – don’t be discouraged. A wiki is simply an editable Web page. Start with a pilot wiki and host a workshop to get others in your organization acquainted with using a wiki. Once you get others in your organization to adopt wikis, as Stewart says, you can stop getting started on things and instead “get done.”
Can you recommend an easy-to-use wiki? We installed MediaWiki, but can’t get it moving because of complaints that it’s “hard to use.”
@Heidi: There are several wikis and all of them contain idiosyncracies that make the learning curve steep. I’ve used MediaWiki, Twiki, ExpressionEngine Wiki, TikiWiki, and am ready to explore Moodle Wiki and SharePoint Wiki. From my perspective, I found MediaWiki to be the easiest to learn, with code that makes nice looking pages without a lot of customizing. (Of course, you CAN customize it: after all, it’s a web site!) This is because it’s a core wiki product that doesn’t try to be anything but a wiki.
The driving influence behind Stewart Mader’s presentation and book is that wiki as a concept needs to be understood and completely embraced before implementing any wiki. Many still do not understand how to work with user editable content with virtually unlimited undo.
I built a wiki using WikiSpaces (www.wikispaces.com), starting with a free site and then upgrading to a cheap site which lets you restrict access, no ads. It is very easy. It was for a committee of a couple dozen people around the USA, Europe, and Australia.
Does salesforce.com have an embedded wiki that integrates with the CRM data?
@Scott: salesforce.com does not have a wiki as one of their “core” features. However, if you check appexchange (where you can get additional modules), there are a few options. Please see http://sites.force.com/appexchange/results?keywords=wiki.
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