Knowledge sharing in an IT environment

[Stroker Ace]

So I've got this wiki at work that I put all of my personal notes into in case I need to share with others.

My team as a whole is working on generating a document repository full of Word, Excel, and Visio files with all the process documentation and modeling they think new hires will need in the future. These flowcharts and spreadsheets aren't really interlinked in any meaningful way.

My first though is "lets wikify everything!" but of course it is hard to keep things like flowcharts maintained in a wiki environment.

Another teammate is pushing to get an MS Sharepoint server up and running, and while that should definitely allow for more interlinking (via search if nothing else) of these discrete DOC/XLS/PPT/VSD files that are floating around it still doesn't really allow for a snappy interlinked organic web of information like a wiki can provide.

Has anyone experimented with hybrids of wiki/sharepoint style knowledge sharing? My team is only 20 people on a team of 500 so in the back of my mind there is a bit of concern about how our implementation might scale up if we are ever called upon to link up with the rest of the project.

The project as a whole uses custom-designed Lotus Notes forms in custom-defined Notes databases with DOC/XLS/VSD attachments to do the heavy lifting.

What would you do?

[JoshV]

Don't share anything, if they can't hire new people, then you're even more valuable =P


(if you can't tell, thats sarcasm)

[Stroker Ace]

I am at the head of a wave of new hires. The new training process is being designed currently. I want to head off the bad ideas now rather than pay for them later.

[Mark Crump]

We're in the process of moving to Sharepoint here. It's worth the initial hassles getting it set up. Having team calendars, task tracking, file repositories etc. is nice. There's also a wiki as part of it, but I haven't played with it.

[Karen]

Sharepoint is pure evil.
Perhaps we are just using it wrong, but it is almost impossible to set-up in a way that is at all user friendly.
There's nothing like being in a meeting with a bunch of highly technical people, having them moan and cry when someone mentions "It's on the portal"

I'd prefer just having all of your documents in some sort of versioning system

[barstein]

From what I saw first hand about a year ago when we were setting up a group of SharePoint portals and sites to replace our static intranet, SharePoint "works great" once it is all set up but it's an enormous pain in the ass for the developers and designers.

Before I left the company we had begun to research a wiki web part, and I don't know how that turned out.

You might want to look into WikiPoint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiPoint) which appears to integrate well with Active Directory. (I assume your company is using AD since you're using SP). It isn't cheap, but it sounds interesting.

Edit: Nearly forgot to mention that there is some code somewhere on the MediaWiki site for authenticating a full blown MediaWiki against LDAP and/or AD.

[Rob_Merritt]

Sharepoint is pure evil.
Perhaps we are just using it wrong, but it is almost impossible to set-up in a way that is at all user friendly.
There's nothing like being in a meeting with a bunch of highly technical people, having them moan and cry when someone mentions "It's on the portal"

I'd prefer just having all of your documents in some sort of versioning system

Sharepoint is a nightmare. One area I support uses WTC Product Center which is based on oracle with success.