Wikis as addons to intranet and corporate file server

This is my post to the blog4biz contest....

A good idea on how to use wikis must be substantiated with good benefits of using it.In our course of work, we generate a lot of documents.

A typical scenario will be:

1. The author creates an initial draft of the document
2. He emails out the document as an attachments to the relevant parties for reviewing
3. He waits for email replies from the relevant parties
4. He then compiles on the changes required from one or more emails. It is possible that a single point might be raised by multiple parties.
5. He makes the suggested changes to the document
6. If there is a version control system in place, he will need to update the document version number and state down why the changes being made
7. He then emails out the finalized version
8. A copy of the document is saved in the corporate file server, his local PC or even just as an email attachments

It is possible that he saves the document in a file server and email the soft links out for others to make the changes directly.

The advantages of using wikis for documents :

1) Automatic email notification or RSS - There is no need to reply to the email after the changes are made. The author will also be notified of the changes instead of waiting for email response

2) Automatic tracking of changes - Changes are tracked and it is easy to identify which section are added or deleted, thus promoting accountability.It is double effort for the reviewers to point out where the changes should be and for the authors to update the suggested changes. Time is also saved without the need to list down what are the changes being made.

3) Automatic version control - Changes by who and when can be identified easily and the version number is always be updated. Subject experts can also be identified through their authorship.

4) Support rollback - Changes can be undone to previous versions easily

5) Single point of storage - People will know where to look for information instead of searching the corporate file server, local pc and their inbox. There is also a lower likelihood that a wrong version of the document is being passed around. The worse scenario is that an older document is updated with new content and circulated as the latest version.The possibility of the document being lost when the local PC or inbox is corrupted or reformatted when someone else take over the PC.

6) Powerful search engine - It will be fast and easy to search the documents with keywords

7) Support linking - Relevant documents can be linked up together and terms can be looked up via the corporate wikipedia.

8) Comments - It will promote the thinking and collaboration process and also allow tracking on the rationale of decisions being made.

9) Support multiple editing - Save time on compiling the changes. And anyone can update the document if required. People will also try to keep the documents up-to-date if it is being referenced upon frequently.

However, I must stress that wikis are not all-encompassing. It is still more efficient to use MS Powerpoint for presentations and MS Excel for working with formulas. However we can tap on the strengths of wikis by putting up the soft links to the documents with relevant keywords so that the documents can be searched easily by others. For those documents that are not edited frequently, it might even be possible to post it as attachments to the wiki.