Building a knowledge base for our IT team

[DT4K]

I'm looking for ideas on what to use for a knowledge base for our IT department.
My first idea was to just install forum software and use that. That would provide:
User management and permissions
Dividing different groups into different categories (applications, infrastructure, support, etc.)
An easy way to create a new thread about a particular issue and attach documents if needed.
The ability for other users to reply to a thread, adding additional information or asking questions.
Built in search capabilities, so when an issue is encountered, you could see if it's come up before.

But I thought I would check with the rest of you tech guys and see if you had other ideas.
If so, what would you suggest?
What are the advantages of your idea vs using forum software?
If you think forum software is the way to go, what would you recommend?

Any input is appreciated.
We really need to get something put together to share knowledge and help with troubleshooting when the same issues come up more than once.

Thanks

 

[Ka0t1x]

Sounds like a job for a Wiki, or a combination of wiki/forum.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

i would say wiki if you were just looking to have a collaborative enviro to document policy & how to solve common issues. asking the users to get invovled doesnt work well with that. tho you could always use an internal wiki for your team, and an external forum or jira type application for the users to ask questions

 

[GaryJohnson]

Sounds like a job for Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal with a wiki plugin/extension/module

 

[Zargon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikiWiki

 

[sourceninja]

We used a wiki, we selected moinmoin, but I cant' say I would suggest that wiki as it was hard to maintain. But a wiki in general has greatly improved our ability to get things done.

 

[Cogman]

I personally like the idea of a forum.

Wikis are ok, but it sometimes makes it hard to see who changed what, or who said what. If you are doing forum based software, then you can easily have Q/A for anyone to browse, and you'll know who said what.

Forums have the problem of burying info at times. Someone might address something in the wrong thread, or threads can go OT, which makes it harder to just search for what you want.

 

[stlcardinals]

If you have access to SharePoint, I've seen some pretty decent Knowledge Bases built using it.

 

[DT4K]

By "users", I only meant members of IT, not end users.

We do have SharePoint, but I'm not real familiar with it's capabilities, beyond just using it as a place to share documents. Does it have the ability to allow people to put up information about an issue and allow other people to add comments? How are the search capabilities? I want to be able to search for an issue, without having to find it in the right place. So I don't want anything that relies on people correctly categorizing a particular issue.

I'm also not familiar with Wikis, but I definitely want to know who is commenting on an issue. I want people to be able to add information about an issue, but I don't want them to be able to change or remove information that someone else has added/posted.

 

[degibson]

I'm also not familiar with Wikis, but I definitely want to know who is commenting on an issue. I want people to be able to add information about an issue, but I don't want them to be able to change or remove information that someone else has added/posted.

1. My group uses a WIKI internally, with mixed success. It would be more successful if our people were more disciplined about using it.

2. Are you sure you don't want to change/remove information once it has been posted? Internal information gets out-of-date rather quickly, in my experience.

3. Whatever you end up doing, put the whole thing under revision control.

 

[stlcardinals]

Another option, depending on what version of Office you use, is OneNote. You can easily create shared notebooks that all of the IT members can make changes to. The new 2010 version is pretty slick.

 

[DT4K]

1. My group uses a WIKI internally, with mixed success. It would be more successful if our people were more disciplined about using it.

2. Are you sure you don't want to change/remove information once it has been posted? Internal information gets out-of-date rather quickly, in my experience.

3. Whatever you end up doing, put the whole thing under revision control.

It's not that I don't want information to ever be changed. I just don't want one person to edit someone else's information. If information becomes outdated, I'd rather handle that by adding comments that explained why the initial information was outdated. That's one of the reasons that forum software was my first idea. When a new issue comes up, whoever deals with that issue could just start a thread explaining the issue and what was done to resolve it. Then other people could add more information or correct information by simply replying to the thread.

Right now, we are basically sharing information about issues through email. And trying to search through thousands of email to find information about a particular issue that has come up in the past is a major PITA.

 

[Oyster]

If you have SharePoint, use it. You probably want to look up all the different things you can do with it, but in general (IMO), it does a very good job. We have a very basic KB, but it gives us the ability to monitor who posted when, the ability to rate the threads, the ability to categorize posts, the ability to search, etc. You can do some funky things like add more metadata to your posts - things like attachments, links to "related" posts, tagging, etc.

 

[JD50]

I think the biggest problem with a wiki is getting people to actually use it. Having to learn the syntax throws a lot of people off. Does anyone know of a good wysiwyg wiki editor, or a wiki engine that has a good wysiwyg editor?

 

[JD50]

OP check out www.fedorasolved.org, they're using something called "plone". It looks interesting, I might look into it.

 

[JD50]

There is a huge difference between a WIKI and a Knowledge Base Script. Wiki allows anyone (public users) to share, create and edit information where as n case of a knowledge base software, only specific users called "admin users" are allowed to create & manage knowledge base content. Think of Microsoft's KB! No one can edit its content except the official MS editors.

I was talking about using a wiki, I wasn't comparing it to the product that you keep mentioning. There's also different access controls with different wiki software, it's not just some big free for all where anyone can do anything...

 

[JD50]

PHPKB knowledge base software at http://www.knowledgebase-script.com uses the powerful WYSIWYG editor from http://www.innovastudio.com. WYSIWYG editor allows you to format the content as per your choice just like you use the MS Office Word's Rich Text Editor. You can point and click to upload images, media files etc.

Sorry, I should've mentioned that I was looking for something that is free and preferably open source.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

PHPKB knowledge base software at http://www.knowledgebase-script.com uses the powerful WYSIWYG editor from http://www.innovastudio.com. WYSIWYG editor allows you to format the content as per your choice just like you use the MS Office Word's Rich Text Editor. You can point and click to upload images, media files etc.

Although its painfully obvious, you should disclose that you are affiliated with the site you are linking us to.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

We do have SharePoint, but I'm not real familiar with it's capabilities, beyond just using it as a place to share documents. Does it have the ability to allow people to put up information about an issue and allow other people to add comments? How are the search capabilities? I want to be able to search for an issue, without having to find it in the right place. So I don't want anything that relies on people correctly categorizing a particular issue.

1. Yes, Sharepoint has discussion boards, wikis, and it also has some free app templates, one of which is a Knowledge Base template.

2. Search is generally pretty good and it does full-text indexing, though you should try to use metadata to help narrow the search results to your best bets.

 

[JD50]

Although its painfully obvious, you should disclose that you are affiliated with the site you are linking us to.

heh, I was thinking the same thing.

 

[beginner99]

I vote for sharepoint too especially since it already seems to be available.

In a normal forum I'm pretty certain you can't search the attached documents. That is possible in sharepoint. you also have versioning of documents in sharepoint, eg if user A creates a document and User B makes some changes a new version is created. everything is tracked as far as I know.

 

[DT4K]

Thanks for all the input. Sounds like I need to do some more research on Sharepoint and it's capabilities. We already use it corporate-wide for sharing documents, project plans, etc.

Since I'm not real familiar with it, I'm having a hard time picturing how it would work. If someone posts information about a particular issue, is there an easy way for other people to comment on that information?

 

[Jeff7181]

If you have access to SharePoint, I've seen some pretty decent Knowledge Bases built using it.

Agree... I like the one my company uses done in SharePoint.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Thanks for all the input. Sounds like I need to do some more research on Sharepoint and it's capabilities. We already use it corporate-wide for sharing documents, project plans, etc.

Since I'm not real familiar with it, I'm having a hard time picturing how it would work. If someone posts information about a particular issue, is there an easy way for other people to comment on that information?

Yes, you can do this a variety of ways. As I mentioned, Microsoft has free application templates and one is a Knowledge Base. I don't recall all the features of it, but I think it does support what you mention above. If not, Sharepoint is extremely flexible and you can do just about anything with it using a little imagination and maybe Sharepoint Designer. I'm a new Sharepoint developer and I've been able to do some pretty cool things with Sharepoint Designer, out-of-the-box functionality, and a little (very little so far) code.

Of course, what I mention above applies to Sharepoint Server 2007. I haven't done enough with Sharepont Server 2010 yet to be able to comment on it.

 

[Jeff7181]

Thanks for all the input. Sounds like I need to do some more research on Sharepoint and it's capabilities. We already use it corporate-wide for sharing documents, project plans, etc.

Since I'm not real familiar with it, I'm having a hard time picturing how it would work. If someone posts information about a particular issue, is there an easy way for other people to comment on that information?

Ours is just set up with a bunch of folders and documents within the folders. (I'm assuming this is the KB template provided by MS as it's nothing special) They've also integrated a Google search feature to search the KB.