Wiki Guide

Wiki: the information-sharing tool you’ve been waiting for

A Wiki is a website that anyone can freely contribute to. Anyone can add or edit pages. Everyone sees the same version at the same time. And all types of information can be shared.

Within your company, you might have an internal website that only certain employees (like members of Human Resources or IT) can edit. These can be great for information that rarely changes and relates only to the knowledge of the contributors. But they’re hardly useful as a centralized information-sharing system. That’s where a Wiki comes in.

Wikis make information sharing a collaborative effort, allowing knowledge to flow freely from top down to bottom up and beyond.

Organizations that share information using a Wiki see the following benefits.

Share information easily

Sharing knowledge that would typically belong to a few key members of your organization makes it easy for people to find the answers they need on their own—without continually disrupting the direct people who know the answer.

While it might still be necessary to ask follow-up questions, checking the Wiki in advance will greatly reduce the length of these conversations.

Find information easily

Wikis are searchable, so people can find what they need with just a few keywords. You can link to other wikis or external resources within the text, so readers can quickly navigate to what they need.

Update information easily

Upon discovering incorrect or outdated information, users can update the content or add a note stating what’s wrong. This helps reduce mistakes, spread the responsibility for accuracy across the company, and deepen mutual understanding.

When everyone in your organization participates in your information-sharing system, you create a culture of collaboration that also encourages independence.

Basic features of a Wiki

You may not have realized, but you’ve probably already used a Wiki. The most
famous example most people have engaged with is Wikipedia, the free internet
encyclopedia that anyone can edit. While your company Wiki may not end up
containing quite as many answers, the concept and functionality are the same.

Wikis can have a variety of uses and applications, but they usually share a
few key functionalities. We’ll walk you through each of these features using
the Wiki in Backlog.

Create a page

To contribute to a Wiki, you’ll start by creating a page. All pages have a
title and text. Unlike pages of a normal website, you won’t need to know any
code to contribute content here. You can write and format text on a Wiki page
like you would an email.

When you’re done, all you have to do is click “Submit” to save
the page, and it can immediately be read by anyone.

You can also use tables and images to enhance your content. Skip to Making pages easy to read to learn more.

Edit a page

Published pages can be edited by anyone who reads them. If, for example,
you notice that a page created by someone else contains inaccurate/outdated
information, you can open the editing screen and correct that information
directly. Just “Submit”, and the page’s contents will update
immediately.

Some Wiki services (including Backlog’s Wiki feature) will notify the original author of any edits by email. This helps authors monitor contributions for accuracy and stay up to date on changes.

Link between pages

Linking between Wiki pages makes it easier for readers to find secondary
materials they may need, especially as your Wiki grows.

When working in a Backlog Wiki, for example, you can simply add brackets
around another Wiki page’s title (e.g. [[ Example Page Title ]]) to
automatically link to that page.

The method for creating links may vary depending on
your Wiki service. For further details, please consult the manual of your Wiki
service.

Most Wikis also contain a few other features designed to make it easier to search for information. A few examples are:

• Full page search
• Hierarchical page display
• A list of the most recently edited pages
• Searching with tags

Other information-sharing tools

Adopting a Wiki doesn’t mean you have to stop using your other information-sharing tools. In fact, we recommend using your Wiki to link to all of your organization’s information-sharing tools in one place.

Email, chat, instant messaging

These tools are designed for communication between individuals or a small group of people. As time passes, it can become difficult to find past conversations. By collecting the conclusions of your conversations on a Wiki page, you can make the information easier to find in the future.

File sharing

Wikis do not usually possess the rich formatting options of office tools like Microsoft Office. For internal company documents, you’ll probably want to continue creating files and sharing them on a file server. However, you can use your company’s Wiki to show the file server’s directory structure and paths to important files.

Online office tools

Suites such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps are equipped with a
variety of powerful applications you’ll likely still want to use. For materials
featuring a large amount of images or charts, it’s best to create them using
online office tools and link to their URL on the Wiki.

For ways to document chat and email exchanges in a Wiki, please refer to Using Wiki as a knowledge base.

Getting started

At this point, you might be realizing that a Wiki is the perfect solution for your organization and feeling ready to get started!

However, it can take some time for everyone to start using a Wiki at an organization that has never used one before. In that case, you will have to be the first Wiki user.

Here are the steps you should take after introducing a Wiki to your workplace for the first time.

Add information that’s useful to you

The first stage of adopting a Wiki is to get into the habit of continually adding pages. You don’t need to write formally or go into deeper details to start; so long as the information is easy to understand, it’s fine.

While your motivation may be to communicate your knowledge to others, it will likely take a while for people to catch on. We recommend starting out by thinking of it as something you’re doing for yourself.

Write what you know

Start out by writing things you’ve learned in the course of your job that you’re likely to forget. For example, try making the following pages:

Records of meetings

Record simple minutes of meetings you participated in. Link to any relevant materials and provide an overview of any conclusions reached, to the extent that they were relevant to you. You can then share your records with other participants.

Links to important resources

Gather together important links to things like the company’s internal site, files on the file server, and external vendors.

Want more tips on pages to create? We’ll provide a few Wiki page templates in the tutorial section.

Add things you’ve heard from others

When you learn things about your job from others, create a new page. Then send the page URL to the person you got the information from, and ask them to review it for accuracy.

If you’re lucky, that person will edit the page themselves, resulting in a better understanding than you would’ve gotten through conversation alone.

Tell others how to search for information

Once you’ve accumulated a decent amount of information on your Wiki, it’s time to tell people about it. Let them know what kind of info you’ve already added and how to search for it. When people know how to check for information on the Wiki, you won’t have to stop what you’re doing to answer as many questions. This will help familiarize others while making work easier for you.

While getting people to start contributing right away may be difficult, the barrier to getting people to start reading it is much lower. And the more they read it and find it useful, the more likely they are to one day contribute to it themselves.

Regularly reference the Wiki

Each Wiki page typically has its own permalink (i.e. a URL that doesn’t change over time.) Whenever the opportunity arises, share the URL and summarize what can currently be found on your Wiki:

• If you have meeting-related pages, include their URLs in your meeting materials.
• Whenever you’re asked a question, add the answer to the relevant page and share the URL to follow up.

Some Wikis include a feature to automatically notify people whenever a page is added or updated. If few people are checking the Wiki by themselves, try taking advantage of this feature.

Add a page on how to search pages

Create a page on how to search for other pages, and put it somewhere obvious (such as the top of the Wiki’s front page).

It can also be useful to create pages that link out to all of the pages certain staff might need, like when onboarding a new staff member. Simply create a “Pages for new staff” page and link to all the relevant pages.

As the number of Wiki pages increases, you’ll probably develop your own approach to searching for pages. For example, “This front page link leads here,” or “Type this keyword from the full page search.” It’s fine to have your own way of searching; just make sure you teach it to others, too.

Getting others on board

As your Wiki grows in both content and readership, you’ll want to start getting others to contribute as well. A little guidance will go a long way.

Here are a few steps you can take to help users start contributing to the Wiki.

Teach people how to create & edit pages

History feature

Most Wikis have a history feature, so even if you make a mistake while editing, you can restore the page to its former state. People are more comfortable making changes knowing they can easily reverse if necessary.

Have new users deliberately mess up a page and then restore it to its original state.

For more on the history feature, go to the “Reverting page edits[d]” section.

Editing

Editing existing pages is an easier task for new users than starting new pages from scratch.

Once users understand the history feature, have them review a batch of existing pages and make corrections or add relevant information.

Creating pages

Eventually, you’ll want others to start contributing unique pages.

The simplest way to have a user create a new page is by copying an existing page. For example, have them create a minutes page for the next meeting based on a minutes page you created previously.

Some wikis have a feature to “star” or “like” a page. You can use these features to express your appreciation for others’ contributions.

Teach people how to organize their pages

Discuss searching and linking

You want your wiki to be easy to navigate for all users. This means regularly reviewing the links on reference pages to ensure they’re up-to-date and well-organized.

Some Wikis will allow you to configure parent-child relationships (i.e. the page hierarchy) between pages. You can therefore collect, for example, procedural documents under a “Procedural Documents” page and minutes documents under a “Minutes” page.

Establish rules for titles

To ensure that groups of similar pages are easy to navigate, set up a simple titling format. If you make these rules too complicated, you’ll likely struggle to get others to follow them. So be sure to make titling formats simple and straightforward.

For example, meeting notes could be titled: “MM/DD/YYYY (meeting name)”. When you establish a standard titling format, it’s helpful to add it to the parent Wiki.

When the wiki starts to take off

If the introduction of a Wiki goes well, the number of people adding pages, as well as the amount of information available, will steadily increase. Eventually, this can make searching for information more difficult, but we have some tips on how to handle the situation.

Establish separate company-wide Wiki and project Wikis

Having read this far, you might be wondering if an organization can/should have only a single Wiki. However, it’s normal for a single organization to use several Wikis for different reasons.

Many organizations have both a company-wide Wiki and project Wikis. The company-wide Wiki generally hosts information that is always relevant, while project Wikis focus on individual initiatives. Because projects are by nature restricted to a limited period of time and a limited number of participants, it’s unnecessary to have project-specific information on the company-wide Wiki. Having a dedicated project Wiki also makes it easy to know where to find project-specific information quickly.

However, if your organization is small or engages in few project-based initiatives, separating your Wikis may not be necessary—and, in fact, may simply make searching for information more difficult.

We recommend every organization start with a single Wiki and separate it into individual project-based Wikis once team members have gotten the hang of things.

Introduction summary

What you’ve learned in the introductory section:

• A Wiki is a website that anyone can freely edit.
• In organizations, the Wiki becomes a centralized location for collecting information often scattered throughout the organization.
• It usually takes time for everyone in an organization to begin using a Wiki.
• When starting a Wiki, focus on making use of the Wiki yourself, and growing the number of contributors one by one.

If you’re ready to try using a Wiki yourself, continue on to the Practice section!

Using wikis with Backlog

In the Practice section, we will show you how to operate a Wiki using Backlog, our online project management and collaboration tool. While we’ll be showing you instructions specific to our tool, the basic Wiki features available in Backlog are similar to other services, so you can still follow along.

First things first: you’ll need to sign up for Backlog. If you’re already a Backlog member: great! If not, we offer a 30-day free trial, risk free.

Use an existing Backlog space

If you have an existing Backlog subscription, you can use your existing Backlog space—no need to create a new one!

To try out the Wiki feature, simply create a new project. You may need to ask someone with administrative privileges to create this for you if you yourself are not an admin.

After creating your Project, skip ahead to Selecting a text format.

Sign up for a new Backlog Space

From our pricing page, you can start your 30-day free trial of Backlog. The Wiki feature is available on any plan.

After acquiring your Backlog Space, you will be asked to input a Project name. Feel free to name this whatever you’d like—something like “Test” is fine. You can always change the project name later on. In Backlog, each Project has its own Wiki.

Your Backlog Space is where all of your organization’s project information, files, and members are located. There is usually one subscription (and one Space) per organization.

Next, you’ll be taken to the User Invite page. If you’re just trying out the features of the Wiki by yourself, you can hit “Skip”. If not, feel free to invite any team members you want to join you on Backlog.

Now your Backlog Space is up and ready. Go to your new project and click “Wiki” on the left-hand sidebar to go to the Wiki’s home page.

Selecting a text format

You usually can’t write a Wiki page in HTML. Instead, you use a simpler set of rules that still contain some of the features of HTML text formatting. The way you write your articles will depend on the Wiki you use.

Backlog’s Wikis support two sets of text formatting rules. Whichever you select will apply to your entire Project.

The formatting rules supported in Backlog are:

• Markdown notation
• Backlog notation

If you’ve created a new Backlog Space

If you’ve just set up your new Backlog Space, Markdown notation will be selected automatically. In most cases, there’s no problem with continuing to use Markdown notation.

You can skip ahead to Adding a page.

If you’re using an existing Backlog Space

If you’re using an existing Backlog space, you should check which notation your Wiki is using by default. You can check this on the page editing screen: just go to your Wiki page and click the “Edit” icon in the top-right to open the page editing screen.

If it says “Text formatting rules (Markdown)” in the top-right of the editing screen, that Wiki is using Markdown notation. If it says “Text formatting rules (Backlog),” it’s using Backlog notation.

We’ll use both in our examples moving forward, so be sure to follow the example that matches your formatting selection.

Click on “Show full text formatting rules” in the “Text formatting rules” box, and you can view the details of your Markdown (or Backlog) notation.

Adding a page

Now it’s time to start actually adding your Wiki! First off, let’s create a new page. There are two methods of adding a page.

Method 1: Using the “+” button

You can add a new wiki page by clicking the “+” icon in the top-right of the Wiki page.

Using this method, the page won’t be linked to other pages automatically. Be sure to add links to the page later to ensure it’s easy to find.

Method 2: Using the linked title

STEP 1 Edit your Wiki’s Home page

Click the edit icon in the top-right of your Wiki’s Home page to display the page editing screen.

If you’ve just created a new Space, the Home page will display hints on how to use the Wiki. Give them a quick read. When you’re done, go ahead and delete them. Since everyone will see this page, we’re going to rewrite it to make it easier to use.

STEP 2 Write a title enclosed in brackets

We’re now going to try adding a page called “Test”. You can delete the current Home page content and add the following to the page contents field:

Markdown notation

# Tutorial

This is a [[Test]].

Backlog notation

* Tutorial

This is a [[Test]].

When you’re done, click the “Submit” button at the top or bottom of the screen.

STEP 3 Click the linked title

When you save your changes, the word “Test” will become a link on the page, as seen below.

When you click this link, you’ll be brought to a new page creation screen with the page name automatically set to “Test.”

STEP 4 Create “Test” page

Copy and paste the text below into the page contents field, and then click the “Submit” button. A “Test” page will be created.

Markdown notation

This is a test page.

On a Wiki, you can **bold** text, ~~strikethrough~~ text,

* and create lists
* like this.

Backlog notation

This is a test page.

On a Wiki, you can "bold" text, %%strikethrough%% text,

- and create lists
- like this.

Once the changes are saved, the page should look like this:

You’ve now made your first new page and linked to it from the Home page! You can return to the Wiki’s Home page and click the “Test” link. This will redirect you to the created Test page rather than the page creation screen.

Making pages easy to read

Now, we’ll introduce you to the most frequently-used text formatting features provided by Wikis.

Headings

If your page features a lot of text, adding headings can make it much easier to read.

Markdown notation

Adding a “#” at the start of a line will designate that line as a heading. You must put a space after the #. “##” will create a level 2 header, while “###” will create a level 3 header.

Copy and paste the text below into your “Test” page, then click the “Submit” button.

# Plan
This feature requires revisions to both the batch and web app.

## Web app
Web app revision details.

## Batch
Batch revision details

# Implementation
Something noticed during implementation.

Backlog notation

Adding a “*” at the start of a line will designate that line as a heading. You must put a space after the #. “*” will create a level 2 header, while “***” will create a level 3 header.

Copy and paste the text below into your “Test” page, then click the “Submit” button.

* Plan
This feature requires revisions to both the batch and web app.

** Web app
Web app revision details.

** Batch
Batch revision details

* Implementation
Something noticed during implementation.

For some Wiki services, headings will automatically display a list of headings on that page. In Backlog’s Wiki, a list of headings will display in the right-hand sidebar.

Lists

Another important formatting feature for readability is lists. Backlog’s Wiki supports both bullet-pointed (“・”) and numbered (“1.”, “2.”, “3.”) lists.

Markdown notation

Adding a “ * ” at the start of a line will display that line as part of a list beginning with a “・”. You must put a space after the *. Putting four spaces before the * will make the line display as another list embedded within the first.

Adding a “1.” at the start of a line will display that line as part of a list beginning with “1.”. You must put a space after the “1.”. It doesn’t matter if you number the following items sequentially with “2.”, “3.”, or just keep typing “1.”. When the list is displayed, the numbers will adjust automatically.

Copy and paste the following text into the contents of the “Test” page, then click the “Submit” button.

# Guidance for new employees

* Explanation of assignments
* Explanation of starting setup
  * PC setup
  * Printer setup
* Internal company processes
  * Attendance management
  * Conference room reservations

## PC setup process

1. Apply OS security updates
2. Install antivirus software
3. Install workplace standard software
  1. Web browser
  1. Office software
  1. Development tools

Backlog notation

Adding a “-” at the start of a line will display that line as part of a list beginning with a “・”. You must put a space after the -. Typing “—” will make the line display as another list embedded within the first.

Adding a “+” at the start of a line will display that line as part of a list beginning with “1.”. You must put a space after the +. Adding “++” to the start of a line will make the line display as another list embedded within the first.

Copy and paste the following text into the contents of the “Test” page, then click the “Submit” button.

* Guidance for new employees
- Explanation of assignments
- Explanation of starting setup
-- PC setup
-- Printer setup
- Internal company processes
-- Attendance management
-- Conference room reservations

** PC setup process
+ Apply OS security updates
+ Install antivirus software
+ Install workplace standard software
++ Web browser
++ Office software
++ Development tools

Embedded images

On a Wiki, you can embed images within pages. Using images can help make things that are hard to explain with words easy to understand.

Markdown notation

You can embed an image at a specified URL using the  format. The alt text will be displayed if the image can’t be loaded.

![Alt text](https://www.backlog.jp/img/common/header/logo_site.png)

Backlog notation

You can embed an image at a specified URL using the #image(Image URL) format. Unlike Markdown notation, you cannot specify the “[Alt text]” characters if the images are unable to be loaded.

#image(https://www.backlog.jp/img/common/header/logo_site.png)

Backlog also provides the option to embed images via our Cacoo online diagram tool. You can also upload image files directly to a Wiki page with any paid Backlog subscription.

Tables

Tables are another great way to make dense information easy to scan.

Markdown notation

Separating text with a “|” will display that text as a table. After your title line, you must include a line of only dashes (e.g. |—|—|—|), to represent the breaks. To right-align fields containing numbers, include a “:” at the far right of the line, as shown in the second table.

| Conference room name | Location | No. of Seats (Left-aligned) |
|----------------------|----------|-----------------------------|
| Gorilla              | 1F       | 6                           |
| Giraffe              | 2F       | 2                           |
| Dog                  | 3F       | 4                           |

| Conference room name | Location | No. of Seats (Right-aligned) |
|----------------------|----------|------------------------------:|
| Gorilla              | 1F       | 6                            |
| Giraffe              | 2F       | 2                            |
| Dog                  | 3F       | 4                            |

Backlog notation

Separating text with a “|” will display that text as a table. Adding an “h” at the end of a line will display that line as the title line. Adding a ~ at the start of a cell will designate that cell as a title line. You cannot right-align numbers in Backlog notation.

| Conference room name | Location | No. of Seats |h
| Gorilla              | 1F       | 6            |
| Giraffe              | 2F       | 2            |
| Dog                  | 3F       | 4            |

|~ Conference room name | Gorilla | Giraffe | Dog |
|~ Location             | 1F      | 2F      | 3F  |
|~ No. of seats         | 6       | 2       | 4   |

When using Backlog notation, you can easily modify an existing table. Just hover your cursor over the chart and an edit button will appear in the top-left of the table. Click this button to display an input field for each cell which will allow you to edit them directly. You can also add or delete rows.

Reverting page edits

Wikis contain a History feature that makes it easy to review past edits or even restore a page to its previous state at any time.

Once you understand how to use the History feature, you’ll never have to worry about making mistakes when editing pages again.

First, open the “Test” page we’ve been using for this tutorial. Click the “…” button to the right of the Edit button to display the “History” menu.

Click “History” to see all edits that have been made to that page. If you’ve followed each step of this tutorial, you should see a page history like the one shown below. The list shows who updated the page and when.

Click version number “1” on this history list.

You can now view the page as it was when we first created it, as shown below.

There is a “Restore this version” button in the top-left of the
screen. Pressing this button will display the following dialog.

Click the “Restore” button to return the page to its former state. Then return to the page history list once again, and you can see that the page has one more item in its history.

If you click on “View changes from previous version” on this list, you can see the specific changes made in that version.

In practice, this has many applications. For example, if someone edits a page you made, you can use this feature to see what they changed. If something is incorrect, you can either correct it or revert to an older version.

Revising page structure

Keeping your page structure organized is important for making its information useful.

Let’s revise our example page’s structure to make sure information is easy to find.

Make multiple pages

So far in this tutorial, we’ve only made a single page called “Test”. Besides “Home” and “Test”, Backlog provides another three default templates: “Requirements Template”, “Retrospective Template,” and “Status Update Template”. Right now, you should have five pages.

Make the following pages, referring back to the “Adding a page[g]” section if you need to. The contents of these pages aren’t important (it’s okay if they just say “XXXX”, for example). We’ll use these pages in the rest of the tutorial.

• Leave applications
• Using the attendance management system
• Expense claims
• Printer settings
• Meeting room reservations

When you’re done adding pages, the right-hand sidebar should look like the following image.

Adding a table of contents to the home page

As the number of pages in your wiki increases, it becomes difficult to find the information you need from the page listing alone.

Adding a guide on the home page will help new Wiki users find information for themselves. Copy and paste the following content to the “Home” page.

Markdown notation

# Initial setup

New employees should check this page before performing initial setup.

* [[Using the attendance management system]]
* [[Printer settings]]

# Regular duties

Anyone who doesn't understand how to use the duties system should check the
procedural manual here.

* [[Leave applications]]
* [[Expense claims]]
* [[Meeting room reservations]]

Backlog notation

* Initial setup
New employees should check the following pages before performing initial setup.

- [[Using the attendance management system]]
- [[Printer settings]]

* Regular duties
Anyone who doesn't understand how to use the duties system should check the
following procedural manuals.

- [[Leave applications]]
- [[Expense claims]]
- [[Meeting room reservations]]

In this example, we have helped new employees to see that they should first read the “Using the attendance management system” and “Printer settings” pages.

Using hierarchies to group pages

For organizations with a large number of pages and contributors, editing the home page like this may be too difficult.

Some Wiki services (including Backlog) have a feature to configure parent-child relationships between pages.

Let’s use this feature to group similar pages together. In Backlog, separating page names with a “/” (slash) establishes a parent-child relationship between those pages.

Separate the pages we added earlier into two groups: “Initial setup” and “Regular duties.” Change the page names to the following.

Now we don’t need to enter the name of each page on our home page.

Copy and paste the following into your Home page.

Markdown notation

# Initial setup

New employees should check this page before performing initial setup.

# Regular duties

Anyone who doesn't understand how to use the duties system should check the
procedural manual here.

Backlog notation

* Initial setup
New employees should check the following pages before performing initial setup.

* Regular duties
Anyone who doesn't understand how to use the duties system should check the
following procedural manuals.

Once you’re done, the home page and right-hand sidebar should appear as follows. Now we can get an overview of the entire Wiki by looking at the page list without having to edit the home page.

Now you can note particularly important pages on the home page, and search for all other pages using the page list.

Group using tags

Some Wiki services have a feature to add tags to pages. Tags are short snippets of text that describe a page.

On Wiki services with tags, you can use tags, rather than a hierarchical structure, to group pages together.

Let’s try grouping our pages using this feature. In Backlog, we can set up
tags by enclosing text in square brackets (i.e. “[ ]”) before the page name.

Each page can only have one parent page, but each page can have several tags.

Both “Leave applications” and “Using the attendance management system” are related to attendance, so let’s tag both of them with “Attendance”. Change the page names to the following.

Tagged pages show their tags underneath the page name. The right-hand sidebar also shows a list of the tags used on this Wiki. “Attendance (2)” indicates that there are two pages tagged with “Attendance” on this Wiki.

Clicking the above tag will display all pages tagged with “Attendance”.

If grouping pages hierarchically proves too tedious, grouping them with tags can be more effective. However, as you accumulate tags, it can become difficult to determine which tag to use. It’s worth trying to keep the number of tags you use as low as possible.

Common page structures

When you first introduce your Wiki, you might have some trouble deciding what kind of content to put in your pages and how to title them.

Let’s go over a few examples to get you started. We’ll provide a few templates that you can use as well—just copy and paste them into your Wiki’s home page.

Page structure for an organization-wide Wiki

In the When the Wiki starts to take off section in our introduction, we talked about separating your organization-wide Wiki and project-specific Wikis.

An organization-wide Wiki refers to a Wiki that an entire company, department, or team can participate in. So long as that organization continues to exist, they will continue to use that single Wiki. For that reason, it’s extremely important that an organizational page structure is established to make information easy to search for.

The following information is frequently shared on this kind of Wiki:

• Organizational charts for departments/teams
• Information for new/newly transferred employees
• Information relating to department procedures
  • Manuals, etc.
• Records of meetings
• Information acquired in the course of work
  • Information to be shared by the organization
  • Personal memos

The following page structure is one example of how this information could be shared.

Below we’ve provided a template that follows this page structure. You can start creating your Wiki by copying and pasting them into your Wiki’s Home page.

Markdown notation

# _____ Department Wiki

* [[Organizational chart]]
* [[Page for new employees]]
  * Please link all information for new or newly-transferred employees on this page
* [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
* [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
* [[Manuals/Attendance management]]
* [[Manuals/Expense claims]]
* [[Manuals/Meeting room reservations]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

Backlog notation

* _____ Department Wiki
- [[Organizational chart]]
- [[Page for new employees]]
-- Please link all information for new or newly-transferred employees on this page
- [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
- [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
- [[Manuals/Attendance management]]
- [[Manuals/Expense claims]]
- [[Manuals/Meeting room reservations]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

Project Wiki page structure

A project usually lasts for a fixed period of time and leaves behind some results. After the project is over, the Wiki will no longer be updated, and only viewed from time to time by people wanting to look at the results. It therefore isn’t that important to have the cleanest page structure, so long as the results are clear.

If a project is to last more than one year, it is important to make information easy to search for, just as with an organization-wide Wiki. Let’s work out a project-wide page structure to share with the project members.

The following types of information are frequently shared on these kinds of Wikis.

• Project goals
• Project schedule
• Project organizational structure & list of personnel
• Information for new team members
• Records of meetings
• Mid-project deliverables
  • Materials made for internal debates, etc.
• Final project deliverables
  • Materials finally delivered to a customer, etc.
• Information acquired in the course of work of particular relevance to the
  project
  • Information to be shared project-wide
  • Personal memos

The following is one example of a page structure for sharing this information.

The following is a template that follows this page structure. You can start creating your Wiki by copying and pasting them into your Wiki’s home page.

Markdown notation

# ______ Project Wiki

* [[Goals]]
* [[Schedule]]
* [[Organizational chart]]
* [[Page for new members]]
  * Please link all information for new members on this page
* [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
* [[Records/Special meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
* [[Mid-project deliverables/Materials for first review]]
* [[Mid-project deliverables/Materials for second review]]
* [[Deliverables/Specification document]]
* [[Deliverables/Manual]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

Backlog notation

* ______ Project Wiki
- [[Goals]]
- [[Schedule]]
- [[Organizational chart]]
- [[Page for new members]]
-- Please link all information for new members on this page
- [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
- [[Records/Special meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
- [[Mid-project deliverables/Materials for first review]]
- [[Mid-project deliverables/Materials for second review]]
- [[Deliverables/Specification document]]
- [[Deliverables/Manual]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

If you have a lot of projects, we recommend standardizing your templates company-wide or department-wide. Doing so will make it easier for employees to get used to a new Wiki when transferring between projects.

Information that doesn’t conform to your page structure

Adopting a page structure like the ones we discussed above makes it easy to determine new page names, but they can make it difficult to know what to do with information that doesn’t conform to that structure. Some people might think, “I don’t know where to put this, so I won’t bother putting it anywhere.”

To account for this, you can establish additional rules for adding information that does not easily conform to the standard page structure. Take the following rules as an example.

Example 1: Child pages of the “Memo” page can be named anything you like

The above template follows this rule. However, this might result in too many “Memo” child pages being made. In that case, the following rule might work better.

Example 2: Child pages of your personally-named page can be named anything you like

Markdown notation

* [[Memos/Williams/Memo Title 1]]
* [[Memos/Harrison/Memo Title 2]]

Backlog notation

- [[Memos/Williams/Memo title 1]]
- [[Memos/Harrison/Memo title 2]]

Revising page structure

Let’s restructure the “Memos” page to make it more useful to other people.

Move pages to more useful sections

You can change a page’s name and its parent page later on. For example, since “Memos/Notes on troubleshooting” will also be useful to new team members, it can be moved to “Page for new members/Notes on troubleshooting”

Ensure others know they can update pages

Pages that begin as personal memos can end up only being updated by that person, even after they’re moved. Since the effort that any one person can expend is limited, make sure to acquire a company/project-wide understanding that this page can now be updated by other people. This will ensure that the information continues to be updated.

Using Wiki as a knowledge base

Using Wiki as a knowledge base helps you to collaboratively manage your information and the content structure with other members.

We will explain the basics of using a Wiki as a knowledge base while introducing some of Backlog’s unique features.

Adding overviews of emails and chats to the Wiki

As time passes, past emails and chats can become difficult to search through. It can also be difficult to quickly find the conclusions of a conversation without reading through several emails.

As we touched on in the “Other information sharing tools[i]” section, you can make information easier to find by summarizing the conclusions of conversations and adding those to the Wiki. It may also be wise to use quote and code block notation to copy and paste the most important parts of chats to the Wiki.

Adding tasks and issues to a Wiki page

Issue management tools (i.e. ticket management tools, bug tracking systems) help teams record, track, and resolve issues. When searching through past issues, it can be difficult to understand their conclusions with reading sifting through several comments, attachments, and even subtasks.

In such cases, as with email, adding a summary of the conclusion of the issue can make finding the necessary information much easier.

With Backlog, you can easily link Wiki pages and tickets. Adding a ticket key (e.g. PROJECT-3) to the Wiki page will automatically turn it into a link to the ticket page.

Separating continuously updated pages and non-updated pages

A Wiki is used as a knowledge base, but, over time, some pages will naturally be continuously updated, while others won’t. You can use the page structure to communicate what members should expect.

Examples of pages that require continuous updates:

• Pages that provide an overview of a topic
  • Example 1: An “Organizational chart” page for a given project with the names of all personnel provided
  • Example 2: A “System structure” page providing connectivity relationships between servers on a software development Wiki
• Pages providing an introduction for new team members
  • Example: A “Page for new members” linked to from the Home page.

Examples of pages that do not require updates:

• Pages representing a particular date and time
  • Example: A page with a disclaimer like “This page provides the results of an investigation made in August of 2019” at the top of the page.
• Pages that are referenced in a parent page
  • Example: A child page with results of a materials review housed under a “Mid-project deliverables” page. Items to be updated in the future are on a child page of the “Deliverables” page.

In extreme cases, you might also note which pages are continuously updated on your Wiki’s Home page. For example, you could modify the organization-wide Wiki from the Common page structures section to clarify which pages are continually updated.

Markdown notation

# _____ Department Wiki

## Continually updated pages

* [[Organization chart]]
* [[Page for new employees]]
  * Please link all information for new or newly-transferred employees on this page
* [[Manuals/Attendance management]]
* [[Manuals/Expense claims]]
* [[Manuals/Meeting room reservations]]

## Non-updated pages

* [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
* [[Records/Special meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
* [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

Backlog notation

* _____ Department Wiki
** Continually updated pages
- [[Organization chart]]
- [[Page for new employees]]
-- Please link all information for new or newly-transferred employees on this page
- [[Manuals/Attendance management]]
- [[Manuals/Expense claims]]
- [[Manuals/Meeting room reservations]]

** Non-updated pages
- [[Records/Regular meeting - (2019-09-03)]]
- [[Records/Special meeting - (2019-09-06)]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 1]]
- [[Memos/Memo title 2]]

Tutorial conclusion

In the first half of this tutorial section, we walked through the features available in Backlog’s Wiki. You learned how to create Wiki pages, make them easy to read, and maintain them over time.

In the second half, you learned how to structure your pages for different uses and how to store different kinds of information in the Wiki.

Congratulations: you’re now ready to use a Wiki in your organization! Give it a try, and never hesitate to reach out to us if you need help using Wikis in Backlog.