22 April 2009
Wiki vs Intranet: What goes where?
When you roll out an Enterprise Wiki, you inevitably run into overlaps with functionality currently provided by the corporate Intranet.
This article looks at the process of determining what content is appropriate for the wiki.
An Enterprise Wiki and an Intranet built on a Content Management System have a lot in common:
- They are both web-based system; accessed via a browser.
- They both allow users to create and share pages, and attach documents, such as PDFs.
- Enterprise Wikis and Enterprise CMS systems have access control capabilities, allowing administrators to section off the site and allow different users rights to view and edit content.
- Modern versions of each allow for easy creation and editing of pages using Word-like rich text editors.
In the last few years we’ve also see a growing convergence between CMS and Enterprise Wiki functionality, with CMS systems such as MS Sharepoint adding tagging, wiki-markup and other social features, and Enterprise Wikis like Confluence adding advanced Access Control and version control for attached documents.
Given the convergence of feature its becoming more difficult to decide “what goes where”. However there are three core features of a wiki, that differentiate it from the other CMS systems:
- The inter-relationship of the pages is defined by links created by users
- The categorisation of the content is created by users, using tags
- Page comparisons, versioning and rollbacks allow users to easily create and collaborate on content
If you look at these three features, I think the core difference between a wiki and a CMS becomes clearer. The tools of the wiki are tools of participation – creation, collaboration, organisation, connection, and reaction. While a CMS has traditionally been a tool for publishing – in which a smaller group of users are contributors, and the majority are spectators.
If you have an existing Intranet then the first thing you need to do is audit the Intranet content.
Before I move on to talk about the criteria for determining if content should be wiki-fied, I want to talk about the impact of “search” on location of content. If you are ahead of the curve and have already implemented Enterprise Search that can search across your Intranet, Wiki, and document repositories then this won’t be such an issue. However for the vast majority of medium and large enterprises findability remains a tricky issue. Modern CMS systems and Enterprise Wikis have the capacity to search their own content in web-pages and in most attachment formats such as PDF, Word and Excel. However, without enterprise or federated search capabilities, your Wiki Search will not find Intranent content and vice versa. This means that if you move content from the Intranet to a Wiki you need to educate your users about where to search for what content. (And adding a Document Management System into the mix, means there will be one more place to search!).
Our approach to Intranet is to do an audit of the Intranet content, and then assess whether the content should be brought across to the wiki using several criteria:
- How often will this content be updated?
- How many people are involved in writing the content?
- Is there a required sign-off for the content to be published?
- What are the implications if the content is not correct or up to date?
- Does the content evolve over time?
- Do you receive feedback that the content is out of date?
- Does the content include complex formatting?
We then work thru the content and decide on whether it should be wiki-fied.
