SharePoint 2010: Wiki Sites

In addition to document management features, SharePoint has collaboration features. One of them is the ability to create wiki pages. This is how it looks:

Word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" which means “fast”. A wiki is a site that is designed for groups of people to quickly capture and share ideas by creating simple pages and linking them together. After someone creates a page, another team member can add more content, edit the content, or add supporting links.

Because team members can edit wiki pages without any special editing tools, wikis are a good tool for brainstorming and collecting information from several people. Team members can easily create links to pages for someone to finish creating later, or link to existing pages, without having to struggle with long Web addresses.

Creating a wiki site is similar to creating any other type of site. You specify the site name, choose a wiki as the type of site, and then specify who will have access to your site.

Creating a wiki site is the same as creating any other type of site. You specify the site name, choose a wiki as the type of site, and then specify who will have access to this site. Before creating this site, be sure that you are at the location where you want this site to be located.

Then under "Site Actions", choose "Sites and Workspaces", and then "Create". After this you would select "Enterprise Wiki" and proceed entering the data for your new wiki site just like you would do for a regular site:

To edit any wiki page, click "Edit" on the page, proceed editing the page, and click "save" when you are done.

You can create links from one page to another to pages. To do this, click "edit", go to the place where you would like to have this link, and insert the name of the page, surrounded by double square brackets: Page Name.

For example, to insert a link to a page called "Planner Demos," type Planner Demos and surround it with double square brackets. The link will be created when you save the page:

You can also create links pages that don't exist yet. This will be just a placeholer link and will look like [...] Later on, you can click on dots and create a new page and then enter text instead of dots.

You can add other items to a wiki site, such as a tasks list to track action items or tasks related to the wiki. You can choose whether or not the list or library appears on the Quick Launch for the wiki.

As you can see, a wiki site is a really good tool for brainstorming, like a white board, where team members can write their ideas.