Figure 1

Using Wikis in Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0

What is a Windows SharePoint Services Wiki site?

A Wiki, which in the Hawaiian language means “quick”, is a website that allows visitors to easily add, remove or

edit content on the site, often without the need for registration. Content on the site is often ‘policed’ by a

community of contributors, who have the

capability of editing inappropriate or

incorrect information. The most powerful

element of Wiki sites is the ease of creating

and editing web sites, enabling non-

technical users to wholly participate in

knowledge sharing or collaboration efforts

through Wiki sites. Within Windows

SharePoint Services, a wiki site also enables

the capability of viewing versions of a wiki site entry, along with when changes were made and who made those

changes. Users have the capability of ‘rolling back’ to a previous version if updates are considered incorrect or

inappropriate. Users with Full Control permissions, often administrators of the wiki site, also have the capability

to tightly control who has the capability to edit wiki site entries, choosing to allow only a certain group of users

to edit a wiki entry, while allowing everybody else to read the wiki site.

How should I think of using a Wiki in my business?

Wikis were originally used by businesses as a primary knowledge sharing tool for employees within the

corporate firewall. However, with the simplicity of wiki technology enabling mainstream adoption by users on

the public Internet, Wikis are beginning to evolve from a corporate knowledge management system into a place

for general collaboration. Topics such as meeting agendas, marketing documents or other internal documents

such as official job descriptions, as shown in Figure 1 can be created by a mix of team members from within a

company or external vendors and consultants. The uses of Wikis within the business environment are varied

and could be considered a solution whenever a business need calls for multiple users collaborating openly on a

single set of text documents. To read more about how Wikis can be used in a business environment, refer to

the article “Using Blogs and Wikis in Business” at:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/techref/blogs.mspx. Additionally, the Microsoft

SharePoint Products and Technologies Team has their own blog built at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepointapps i

Tips and TricksUsing Wikis

Figure 2

Figure 4

Figure 3

How do I edit an existing Wiki page?

Editing an existing Wiki page is extremely simple for the non-technical user. When visiting any page that is

available for editing, the ‘Edit’ button will appear in the top right of the screen. The user simply clicks on the

button and makes the changes necessary to improve the wiki site. Within the doucment, there are multiple

formatting tools available, which are similar to those found in Microsoft Office Word 2007. Figure 4 (next page)

shows a small subset of the capabiliites shown on the user interface for creating and / or editing pages within

the wiki site. While editing a page, users may choose to ‘check out’ the site, which precludes other users from

making changes at the same time to a particular site. They can then ‘check in’ the changes they’ve made, which

enables them to type comments on what changes were made and why.

How do I begin to create a Wiki page?

After your IT team has created the base Wiki site, any user

of the site has the capability of creating the first wiki page.

When first deployed, the Wiki site displays a generic

“Welcome to your wiki site” page, as shown in Figure 2.

The easiest way to get started is to click ‘Edit’ in the top

right corner, and change the text to what is appropriate for

the site, for example editing the text to that shown in Figure 1. To create a new wiki page, the easiest thing to

do is create a link by typing [[NAME OF NEW

PAGE]] (include the double brackets). When

‘OK’ is clicked after editing is completed, a new

hyperlink is created as “NAME OF NEW PAGE”. All a user has to do is click on this hyperlink to create their new

page. Note that a new page is not created until a hyperlink is

clicked. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 designates

hyperlinks with pages that have not yet been created as

having a dashed underline beneath the hyperlink (See Figure

3). By clicking on this dashed hyperlink, a user generates a

new page within the Wiki as shown in Figure 4. Users create

the text, using formatting tools similar to Office Word 2007

and then clicks “Create” to save the new Wiki page.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepoint ii

Figure 5

How do I track the history of edits made on the Wiki site?

One of the more powerful features of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Wiki site is the ability for users to

view who made what changes to a page and when. At a first glance, it is possible to see on the main page

which registered user made the last modification to a site. At the bottom of each page is text stating when and

who last modified the document. For example “Last modified at 2/22/2007 4:21PM by Toni Poe”. In addition,

any user can click on the History button at the

top of the page to view a series of screen

showing color coded additions and deletions to

a text, including the various versions of the

document, as shown in Figure 5. On the left

hand side of the screen are the versions of the

page, in this case version 1.0 through version

6.0. By clicking on each of these versions, the

user sees the changes that were made from the

prior version, as well as who made the changes

and at what time. The gold highlighted words

are additions while the crossed out grey words

are deletions. In addition, a user can view a summary of all changes made to a particular site by clicking the

button “Version History” from within the History page. Doing this shows a chronological display of the changes

made between different versions.

How do I restore the site to an earlier version?

Once a user views the versions of a wiki site available, it may be necessary to revert the site back to a previous

version. There are three simple ways to change back to a previous version. The first, of course, is to use the

Edit button to manually change the site back to the way the user would like to see it. The second is to delete

the most recent version, which automatically reverts back to the second to the last version listed. The better

way is to click on the link on the left side of the site representing the version the user feels is most appropriate

and then click “Restore this version”. Windows SharePoint Services restores a previous version, labeling it as

the next version number in the sequence. For example, in Figure 5, a user has clicked on the 2.0 version

created on 2/22/2007 at 9:53am. If that user decides this version is more appropriate, they can click on

“Restore this version’, which creates a version 7.0, but is exactly the same as the text found in version 2.0.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepoint iii

Figure 6

How do I know when a site changes?

Within the History button of any wiki site, a user has

the capability of being alerted, via email, when a wiki

page is updated. By clicking on the “Alert Me” button at

the top of the History page, a user can designate what

changes they want to be notified of, how often the

notifications should arrive and what the subject of the

email should be, which will help the user identify which

pages have been changed. The user can also choose to

enter in user ids for others who might want to be

notified. This alert sends an email with a view of the changes made as well as a link to the relevant pages.

Additionally a user can select the “Alert Me” button from the pull down list of the actually document library

containing the wiki pages. This would enable a user to receive alerts only for the page selected, and not for

changes made to any page on the site.

Another way that a user can track changes made to an entire wiki site is to sign up for an RSS feed of changes

made to a wiki site. This is done by clicking “View All Pages” from the main page and then selecting View RSS

Feed from the Actions pull down menu. The RSS Feed can then be viewed through an RSS Reader such as the

one provided with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, shown in Figure 6.

What permission levels are set by default within the Windows SharePoint Services Wiki site?

By default, there are three levels of security within the Windows SharePoint Services Wiki site: Owners,

Members and Visitors. The table highlights the main differences between the three levels of security:

Table 1Windows SharePoint Services Security Group Description of PermissionsVisitors Read the current and historical versions of a wiki site. Does

have the capability to create alerts and RSS feeds for wiki page change notification.

Members Has Visitor permissions plus capability to edit, restore, delete and check out wiki pages.

Owners Has Members permissions plus capability to manage permissions for the entire wiki site as well as unique wiki pages.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepoint iv

How do I change permissions so only a select group of users have the capability to edit a wiki page?

In some cases, it might be desired to limit changes to a wiki site or page to a smaller subset of users who visit

the site. This may be done, for example, to allow a broad group of users to read the progress of a document

that is being collaborated upon by a smaller group of users. Or, it may be used to ‘lock’ a version as might be

done for a meeting agenda a week before the event. In order to change permissions on a Wiki site, the

authenticated user must be a member of the Owner group, defined in Table 1 above. To change permissions for

a particular wiki page, click on “History” and then click on “Manage Permissions”. Within this Manage

Permissions, page, select “Edit Permissions” from the Actions pull down menu. The user is asked to confirm

whether they wish to “Copy permissions from the parent, and then stop inheriting permissions”. Note that

once you click ‘OK’, this particular wiki page will no longer inherit permissions from the partent site. Therefore,

if a group is added to the main wiki site, it will not automatically be added to the individual wiki page site, but

instead must manually added by an administrator. Once the user clicks “Ok”, they tick the Users/Groups for

which they desire to change permission levels, and then select “Edit User Permissions” from the Actions pull

down menu. The user can then change the permissions for Users / Groups by selecting whether they desire the

User / Group to have Read Only, Design Group or Full Control permissions, as defined above. Selecting Visitor

will ‘lock’ the wiki page so that only those groups remaining have the capability to edit the wiki page.

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepoint v

Technical DependenciesThe Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Wiki site requires the following to be installed

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0*

*Review Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 system requirements for additional information:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/techinfo/sysreqs.mspx

More Information

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is technology in Windows Server that offers an integrated portfolio

of collaboration and communication services designed to connect people, information, processes and systems

both within and beyond the organizational firewall. Now available at no additional cost, Windows SharePoint

Services makes it simpler for IT professionals to implement and manage a team collaboration infrastructure.

Application Templates are tailored to address the needs and requirements for specific business processes or

sets of tasks for organizations of any size. The templates provide out-of-the-box, customizable scenarios which

solve business needs as well as providing a starting point for partners and developers looking to build more

sophisticated Windows SharePoint Services solutions.

For more information on the technologies described in this article, please visit:

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0:http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services:http://www.microsoft.com/sharepointapps

Microsoft Office Word 2007:http://office.microsoft.com/word

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007:http://office.microsoft.com/outlook

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, email address, logo, person, places, or events is intended or should be inferred. This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. www.microsoft.com/sharepoint vi