SharePoint Blog vs Wiki Smackdown

A case study:
Building a Knowledge
Base Solution on top
of SharePoint 2010?
Slideshare v1.9

A case study:
Building a Knowledge
Base Solution on top
of SharePoint 2010?
Adam Cogan
Chief Architect at SSW
Microsoft Regional Director
@AdamCogan
Delivering Awesome Web Applications

Agenda
The importance of a KB
Key Requirements
‘Nice to have’ requirements
The Importance of LiveWriter (the Rich Client)
Blogs vs Wiki
Alternatives
The 4 SharePoint Alternatives
Conclusion
The Future

Knowledge Bases!
 Easy to manage
• Add
• Change
• Remove articles
 Easy to search and find
 Nice URLs
What are we talking about?

 Colin Wood
 http://support.scinaptic.com/
Thanks to...

Chief Architect at SSW
 Developing custom solutions for
businesses across a range of
industries such as Government,
banking, insurance
Microsoft Gold Partner
Microsoft Regional Director
VSTS MVP
@AdamCogan
About Adam

 In the normal world, we hope for a response like this:
Support Response
From: support@adobe.com
Thank you for reporting this error. To prevent future errors, we recommend
you ensure all your drivers are up-to-date. Unfortunately, we are unable to
address your more serious psychological problems.
Have a good day,
Bill
Adobe Support

 Do you use balloons in screenshots instead of a 'Wall of
Text'?
 http://sharepoint.ssw.com.au/Standards/Communication/Rules
ToBetterEmail/Pages/HowToUseBalloons.aspx
A better way...

 Customer sends Question
 Answer with URL
 http://sharepoint.ssw.com.au/Standards/Management/RulesTo
SuccessfulProjects/Pages/KB.aspx
Knowledge Base... A better way

 Responding to a known issue with a KB article
Sample Response 1
Dear Harry,
Thank you for taking the time to report the issue for SSW Code Auditor. I'm
happy to let you know that this is a known issue and has been addressed in our
knowledge base. Please see
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/KB/KB.asp?KBID=Q260000 for details.
Kind Regards,
Bob

 Responding when you cannot reproduce the issue
Sample Response 2
Dear Harry,
Thank you for taking the time to report the issue for SSW Code Auditor.
I am sorry to let you know that I cannot reproduce this. Could you please
provide me with more details, or even better would I be able to connect to your
PC - it is simple and you can see everything I do. To do so, you can send me an
appointment for an appropriate time or add me to your MSN Messenger, my
address is xxx@s*w.com.au
P.S. Don't forget to run SSW Diagnostics, ensuring that you only get green ticks.
Kind Regards,
Bob

 Informing of a Fix
Sample Response 3
Dear Harry,
Done. The code changed from
xxx
to
yyy
Thanks for reporting this bug - our software gets better with help from every
customer like you.
This fix will be available in the next version shortly.
Kind Regards,
Bob
Note: In this email, you can offer them an interim build

 Informing of an update
Sample Response 4
Dear Harry,
Thank you for taking the time to report the issue for SSW Code Auditor. I'm
happy to let you know that this problem is fixed in this release.
Please download the new version at
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Download/download.aspx
P.S. Don't forget to run SSW Diagnostics and gets all green ticks
www.ssw.com.au/diagnostics
Kind Regards,
Bob

 SEO – Nice URL, nice title tag
 Clipboard functionality like in Word
 Copy-Paste Images
 Ribbon bars with easy formatting (h1, h2, h3 etc)
Key Requirements

 Nice HTML
 No Word-inserted CSS!
 ...
Key Requirements

 Ordering by ‘category’
 Not date
 ...
Key Requirements

 Comments
 Can group KB article in multiple categories
 Publishing/Approval Workflow
 Sort by rating and popularity
 Image handling
 ie. renaming
 ...
“Nice to have” requirements

 The Importance of LiveWriter (the Rich Client)

 ...
LiveWriter has two big holes

No ‘save as’ to move the image locally

 Create blog
 Create content
 Categorize into at least 2
 Check Image
 Check URL
 Repeat for Wiki
SharePoint Blog vs SharePoint Wiki

On blogs
 But not good enough
None on Wiki
 only for internal users called 'Note Board' that display on
their mysite
 ...
Verdict on Comments

SharePoint 2010 Wiki’s don’t have a commenting system
SharePoint 2010 Blogs have an ordinary commenting system (no
threading, no spam detection etc)
Suggestion to Microsoft: built in web part to add one of the
main 3rd party commenting systems:
 www.Disqus.com
 www.IntenseDebate.com
 www.aboutecho.com
 How could Microsoft solve this... (two ways)
How to Solve the comment problem

 Insert a web part called DISQUS comments
Option 1:
Install a SharePoint feature that

 In page layout dropdown
 Select a 4th layout 'Basic Page with DISQUS‘
 ...
Option 2:
Install a SharePoint feature that

On blogs - missing
On Wiki – doesn’t save (WTF?)
Verdict on Ratings

Blog-
http://adam-sp2010demo/sites/TJsBlog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2
Wiki with spaces –
http://adam-
sp2010demo/sites/TJsWiki/Pages/Two%20Must%20Have%20Tools%20for%20
a%20More%20Readable%20Web.aspx
Wiki with dashes - http://adam-sp2010demo/sites/TJsWiki/Pages/Two-Must-
Have-Tools-for-a-More-Readable-Web.aspx
Verdict on Url Problem

SEO marketers want to stuff different keywords into the:
 Page Name,
 Page Title,
 URL and
 Meta Description Problem.
SharePoint 2010 Wiki’s assumes the same text in first 3 and offers no way of
editing the ‘Meta Description’ tag.
 This is an incorrect assumption and should be fixed in SP1 (if Microsoft wants to
get it used in the CMS world).
http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/BetterSoftwareSuggestions/SharePointT
eamServices.aspx#WikiSEO
 ...
SEO – Page Name, Page Title, URL
and Meta Description Problem
Keep these 2 the same
Let me change the URL

 WordPress
 Wiki – Screwturn Wiki
 SharePoint Wiki
 SharePoint Blog
 ...
Alternatives

WordPress
Nice URLs
LiveWriter
Wiki (over Blog)
Minimal Customization - Need to add a view (not sorted by
date)
PHP
User Experience is consistent with intranet
Rating System
Integrated Authentication
Found using SharePoint search
3/9

Screwturn Wiki
Nice URLs
LiveWriter
Wiki (over Blog)
date)
.NET
Rating System
5/9

SharePoint Blog
Nice URLs
LiveWriter
Wiki (over Blog)
date)
.NET
Rating System
5/9

SharePoint Wiki
Nice URLs
LiveWriter
Wiki (over Blog)
date)
.NET
Rating System ?
8/9

 SharePoint Wiki!
Winner is...

Can’t use Wiki with LiveWriter!

1. Live Writer - Publishing to SharePoint Blog Site
2. Word 2010 - Publishing to SharePoint Blog Site
3. Live Writer - Publishing to SharePoint Wiki Site via Blog
4. Rich text editor - Directly in SharePoint Wiki Site
Options

 ...
1. Live Writer - Publishing to
SharePoint Blog Site

 Open Live Writer and Add Blog Account:
1. Connecting to SharePoint

1. Add the URL to your SharePoint
2010 Blog Site

 Connecting to SharePoint - Done!
1. You will be prompted whether you wish
to download editing theme from Blog site

 File New Blog post
 Publish
1. Creating Simple Post - Live Writer

 Copy from Word to LiveWriter (Ctrl+Shift+V)
1. What about existing Word docs?

 "It seems hit or miss whether the images come into Live
Writer"
 Copy and Paste separately
1. Images from Word?

1. Live Writer - great for image editing

 Each image as an attachment to the Blog Post Item
 This is great - Post + images live as 1 unit in SharePoint
 Good for moving and migration
 Deleting post, everything is gone
1. How Live Writer publishes images
in SharePoint Site

Live Writer is simple to use
Feature packed Rich Text Editing
Copy and Paste directly from clipboard
(SnagIT straight into Live Writer Rich Text Editor)
Familiar office ribbon in version 2011
Preview your blog post within Live Writer with the styles from your
SharePoint blog site
1. Advantages

No nice URLs
 Can only publish to SharePoint Blog Sites not Wiki Page
libraries.
Customisation needed (need time/budget)
Versioning / publishing controls
 Wiki has better out-of-the-box which blog sites do not
have.
Separate application on the desktop required (minor)
1. Disadvantages

2. Word 2010 - Publishing to
SharePoint Blog Site
 Word 2010 has in-built Blog publishing capabilities
 Allow us to publish our existing Word formatted KB articles
relatively seamlessly

2. Enter URL of SharePoint Blog Site

2. Word Document will be updated to
reflect the published state of the
Document

 Word 2010 creates new images in the Photos library of the
Blog site with a unique name and references them in the Blog
Post
2. How Word 2010 publishes images
in SharePoint Site?

 Images randomly named in folder
 Association to blog post?
Suggestion to MS: Fix this so that it is the same as the Live
Writer approach and is consistent across their products.
2. Images - No good

 Customize Site HomePage to change the Webpart display(s)
 Posts are listed top to bottom by default so probably some user interface
modifications required
 Have to decide if we need the ‘Comment’ functionality on existing posts
 Theme and Brand the Site (MasterPages) CSS etc. to look similar to current
WebSite
 Add search capabilities to Site
 If Search Server Express 2010 is used, add Search Webpart to Homepage
 Work out URLs to be used and how it can be achieved in SharePoint
2. Additional Development Tasks
Required

Word 2010 publishing is better for Publishing / migrating
existing articles as it is more seamless and is quicker to get
them into SharePoint
Use Word for the rich text editing experience which most
users are familiar with
Spell check is awesome
2. Advantages

Word 2010 adds a lot of unnecessary styling
Some functionality in Word 2010 will not be supported in Blog
Site
Not easy to re-style blog posts once created – no CSS
classes referenced (this is the same for the blog post).
2. Disadvantages

 Ultimate solution!
 Use LiveWriter to publish to blog and then to wiki
3. Live Writer - Publishing to
SharePoint Wiki Site via Blog

 Nice URLs
 Each article is a page that can have a proper URL with no
URL rewrites
3. Benefits of the Wiki

 Publish to a blog site
 Copy the content from blog item
 Paste to Wiki Page
 Move images into a image library
 Fix the image links
 Delete blog item
3. There is no direct route

 Copy and paste the text into the Post title as well.
 The reason we do this is so that we can click to
open the blog post when published to blog site:

 Create a sub heading called Issue and set its html
style to Heading 3

 Type your text in normal paragraph style:

 Paste screenshots into Live Writer
 Select the image
 Change the picture to original size

 Open up the actual blog post

 Navigate to the Support Wiki Library
 Create new page

 Give the page a name - the KB article number

 Paste the contents of the blog post into the editor

 The article will retain its formatting form the blog
post and will now be visible in the editor of the wiki
page:

 Remapping images...
 When the blog post was created the screenshots
were created as attachments to the Post List item.
Yes we could leave them there and maintain the link
form the wiki page to them but we probably want to
copy them off to the Site Assets library in the Team
Site and change the image source links to point to
Site assets

 Move images to Site Assets do the following
 Open up SharePoint Designer 2010 and open up
the blog Site and the main team site so that they
appear as separate windows (so we can drag drop
between them). Potentially you could up up two
browsers in explorer view of blog and KB library.

 All Files view
 Go to the All Files view and Select the images from the
posts list (you need to know the list item ID of the blog
post) and select copy

 Got to the SharePoint Designer window where the
Support Site is Open and navigate to the Site Assets
library and select paste

 Go back to your Wiki Page in Edit Mode and Switch
to Html Source Mode

 Change all URL references to be relative to the 'Site
Assets Library' within the team site:

 Done! ;-)
 Article is published
 To modify
 UnPublish
 Make changes
 Republish

Can use Live Writer as the editing tool which is focused on
creating blogs/articles in a rich text editing environment
Using the benefits of Live Writer publishing with the benefits of
a Wiki Page
3. Advantages

A “few” steps involved...
Very manual process remapping / moving images which kind
of defeats the point of easy content editing
Suggestion to MS: Allow the ability to directly publish to a
Wiki from LiveWriter.
3. Disadvantages

4. Rich text editor - Directly in
SharePoint Wiki Site

 Assuming you want to use SharePoint Foundation, you can’t
use Enterprise Wiki
 No ratings
 No tagging
 Use the Team Site with Wiki Library
4. Wiki Options SharePoint
Foundation 2010

 Create a standard Team Site in SharePoint
Foundation
 Create a Wiki Library

 This will take you into Rich Text Edit Mode for
editing page.

 Apply styles to text
 Spell check your content (sux)
 Insert and format tables
 Embed graphics or video
4. The Rich Text Editor

Spell check not as good as word
 Need to manually check it
 http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBett
erTechnicalDocumentation.aspx#WordSpellingAndGramm
arChecker
4. The Rich Text Editor

 RTE (Rich Text Editor) CSS classes
 ...
4. Identify CSS classes

 format .ms-rteElement
How styles/themes work
 If you have no site them applied to a site
(default – no theme)
 CSS files are resident in the 14 hive (SharePoint 2010)
 Once you apply a theme the CSS files are auto-propagated to themes
folder of the site and you can modify the CSS form here
 How do you customize...
4. Identify CSS classes

1. Apply a theme to the site and customise the CSS file associated with the
site theme which is stored in the themes directory of the site
2. Add a custom CSS file to the Site Assets library of the SharePoint
Foundation 2010 site and reference the CSS by creating a custom
masterpage with a CSS reference. This masterpage can then be set as
the Site masterpage.
3. Directly modify the CSS files in 14 hive on server (access not available to
do this and not a good approach) if no site them used.
...
4. Customising the RTE Styles of the
Wiki Editor - 3 options

 Go to the themes folder and open up the corev4-XXXxxx.cs
and modify the RTE classes
 This approach is flawed in that if revert back to the default
(i.e. no theme) all your CSS is lost and also if you change
theme all your ccs is lost.
 ...
4. Option 1 - Change theme

 Copy and paste the v4.master in SPD and give it a new name
4. Option 2 - Link to custom CSS

 Create a CSS file in notepad and save it with a .CSS
extension. Add the CSS RTE styles you wish to change i.e.
H1 0r H2 etc. Upload this file to the Site Assets library of the
SP 2010 Team Site.
 Open up MasterPage and add CSS reference in the head
content as below (note no publishing infrastructure so you
cannot use the spURL tokens):
4. Option 2 - Link to custom CSS

 CSS remains regardless of changes to site them and 14 hive file
changes.
 Better than option 1
 Also now that we have a masterpage for the site we can add
another essential modification to a hosted SharePoint site which is
 Fix “Active X” warning on opening the site
 http://www.getsharepoint.com/blogs/ms/
 ...
4. Option 2 - Benefits

 Not an option in a hosted environment
4. Option 3 - Directly modify the CSS
files in 14 hive on server

 Go to Versioning settings of Wiki Library and turn on
versioning with major and minor version s and require content
approval:
4. Publish/Version

 Add new page
 Add images you have to upload – they are put into a
folder for the wiki page in the site assets library.

 To add images you have to upload separately
 They are put into a folder for the wiki page in the site assets
library
4. Images?

Full control of editing experience
Nice URL structure without the need for URL rewrite code which is required for blog
In-built publishing/versioning
Adding a new masterpage for CSS and removal of active x warning gives even more
customisation options such as moving the location of the search bar to more
prominent location which is essential for a KB Site. The default search location is not
obvious in SP 2010 Foundation team sites
Images uploaded to Site Assets in a folder specifically for Wiki Page
No additional software install required (minor)
4. Advantages

No copy and paste images from the clipboard
No use of multiple content types in Wiki Library for Pages
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/turn-
on-support-for-multiple-content-types-in-a-list-or-library-
HA010378236.aspx
4. Disadvantages

 Rich text editor - Directly in SharePoint Wiki Site
Conclusion

 This right click menu makes working with images a nasty
experience ...
Live Writer is no panacea until they fix
the big holes in handling images

 we need a right click menu item on the image
‘convert to local image’
 ...

 Write a web end point that tricks Windows Live Writer to think
it's talking to a blog server (but saves it to file instead)
 http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheWeeklySourceCode55No
tABlogALocalXMLRPCMetaWebLogEndpointThatLiesToWind
owsLiveWriter.aspx
The Future

Summary
The importance of a KB
Key Requirements
‘Nice to have’ requirements
The Importance of LiveWriter (the Rich Client)
Blogs vs Wiki
Alternatives
The 4 SharePoint Alternatives
Conclusion
The Future

Thank You!
Sydney | Melbourne | Brisbane | Adelaide
info@ssw.com.au
www.ssw.com.au

Find me on Slideshare!
http://www.slideshare.net/SSWConsulting/

SharePoint Blog vs Wiki Smackdown

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Último

Último (20)

Destaque

Destaque (20)

SharePoint Blog vs Wiki Smackdown

Notas do Editor