How can the Wiki Extensions help me?
Of course every organisation has its own individual challenges, and every company has a different understanding of what is meant by terms like documentation, knowledge transfer and communication. There are, nonetheless, several themes inherent in most groups, and lessons learned by one firm in the area of knowledge management can most likely be implemented by another when creating product specifications.
To help decide whether the Wiki Extensions will be useful for you and yourorganisation, we have listed a few common pain points below and how our software can be implemented to solve these.
Product Specifications
Problem: Nobody in our team sticks to approved terminology, they all express things completely differently and complain about how long it takes to write up their findings.
Solution: Defining text snippets provides you with a very quick and easy method of reproducing complex terms (e.g. regulations, certification numbers or product names) or set blocks of text, with no risk of typing errors. For longer pieces of text, we would recommend using the Extensions' centrally-managed wiki page templates. That way, you can ensure that all product specifications look the same, regardless of where they are in your SharePoint site. Not only that, but your team members will save time and not have to reinvent the wheel every time they document something.
Knowledge Management
Problem: Our users spend more time on formatting than they do on creating content. As a result, we have dozens of different styles being used, and some workers even seem to prefer using the competition's colours!
Solution: The Wiki Extensions allow you to predefine permissible formats, limiting the styles and fonts available to authors. So as long as your team can differentiate between Header 1, Header 2 and Body Text, you shouldn't have any problems. For more elaborate styles, we recommend defining a CSS file and integrating this into the wiki settings. As a result, your wikis will look more professional and the uniformity will make them easier to read.
Manuals/Guidelines
Problem: Nobody knows which tool to use. Either they start writing the manual in Word and forget to share the information in our wiki, or they write the content in the wiki and then copy&paste it across. Things then start getting complicated when changes have to be made and we have to edit the information in two places.
Solution 1: We recommend writing your handbooks directly in the wiki. By simply assigning a chapter number (e.g. 1.1, 1.2 etc), it very easy to generate ready-to-go, professional-looking documents in PDF format. Thanks to the XSL transformation, your documents will look as professional as they do in Word, you'll have a full table of contents and, crucially, all your handbooks will be in the same format.
Solution 2: Alternatively, you can use the BlueBridge Wiki Importer to extract your content from Microsoft Word and place it into a wiki library. The Importer is part of the Extensions, but it will need to be customised to your environment and requirements. This generally requires 3-10 days depending on your requirements and would have to be ordered separately from us.
Induction of New Employees
Problem: We've already put useful information into our wiki - things like "how do I set up my answerphone?" or "how do I claim expenses for my business trip?" that everyone needs to know. But we have trouble getting people to look in the right place, and especially new colleagues don't think to look in SharePoint and don't know what to look for when they're there.
Solution: Set up a filtered view in SharePoint to show only the pages that are relevant to new employees. Then use the Wiki Extensions to print out these articles in a professional format. And what's more, changes can be made in the wiki right up to the point when the "induction handbook" is printed on the morning of their first day, and will therefore be completely up-to-date.