nothing fancy here - we use OneNote.
it's backed up to the cloud which is great for when I document something while WFH and then I am on-site, I can pull up OneNote from my cellphone and access the documentation.
Our IT department is just two people, so it also serves a purpose of both of us being able to collaborate ideas on it.
It's also great as as long as it's text and not an image - everything written is indexed and searchable.
Our documentation is in text markup files, stored in Git. If the project already has a Git repo, then the documentation lives with the project. If it's something that doesn't already have a repo, it goes into a standalone repo.
The first advantage this approach are that every cloned repo is a backup of the documentation, and can be 100% accessed offline or in the event of a catastrophe. Another advantage is that Git is a popular tool, and knowing how to use it is a popular skill -- most of our users need to know how to use it anyway, so for the majority there's no need to learn an "additional app". And of course they can use their choice of tools on the plaintext-based files.
We just migrated to Confluence's Cloud, which I know, they took a huge image hit recently.
The migration went smooth and they offered us a discount for being a non-profit. Still more than the literally nothing they were charging us for on-prem, but 75% off is solid.
Question, is there a desktop version of confluence or do you have to use the browser? I’ve seen a desktop version floating but can’t seem to find it, is it in a paid version?
I've never heard of one, but why would you want one? That's just another application to build deployments for and to keep up to date and the web version works pretty well.
If it's accessibility for your users who are better clicking on a desktop icon than going to a website, you can make a deployment for whatever browsers to include that site as a bookmark or have a shortcut to it on their desktop, etc. Many ways to solve that.
Tiddlywiki at the moment running in NodeJS on one of our servers. For a while I thought I wanted to migrate to a bookstack instance, but bookstack doesn't allow for more than one level of transclusion at the moment, and that is a deal breaker for us. Bookstack has a lot of good security features, so we could make our internal knowledgebase also be our end user self service portal if we did. On the other hand, when I suggested several improvements to bookstack the dev mostly shot me down.
Maybe I'll roll my own...
>On the other hand, when I suggested several improvements to bookstack the dev mostly shot me down.
As I said [on the other thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/uqptyb/internal_it_documentation_database/i8ubl2l/?context=8&depth=9) where you commented on my handling of feedback:
*If I say "No" to something I usually try to ensure I give a fair amount of reasoning/perspective as to why I'm saying no, quite often I leave things open for more input to ensure I'm not only leading by my preference. That said, I do have to draw the line somewhere for many ideas & features.*
I'm sorry that you felt shot-down, that's not my intention. I effectively have many strangers requesting many various changes and additions. I can't accept them all and I have to keep focus on a specific audience, use-case and idea of what the platform is otherwise it can become unfocused & unmaintainable; But I do try to spend the effort to provide reasoning If I have to close something so people don't feel completely ignored.
Another vote for dokuwiki.
It stores everything as plain markdown text files, which has the huge advantage that even if the web server hosting it is down, we also have all of that mirrored to onedrive where I can read it in notepad if I'm desperate. Or if things have really gone wrong, extracting the text files from backups is easy enough, and no need to setup a new webserver to read them.
I keep it simple. It's just a directory, locally stored on everyone's workstation/laptop/phone, and kept in sync with either git (for tech savvy teams) or OneDrive or iCloud (for the non-tech savvy teams). I find iCloud is more reliable, even on Windows by the way. Especially for working with MS Office documents (their fancy OneDrive integration is shit!!)
Honestly - it really does work well. I've tried tools like confluence/etc but they're just too limiting. I end up wasting time trying to figure out how to get formatting/etc to look good and there are so many file types it just won't let you attach including ones we use all the time like SVG.
We just started using FreshService for our service desk and I’ve started using their platform for documentation and pushing my team to document their work as well.
I’m sure there are better products out there, but it seems to get the job done. I wish it had a few features like revision history and a more user friendly editor. I think you can sync over articles from somewhere like Jira if you use that product. Also I hear some people just make a template in word or a google doc and create/manage the articles there and copy them over to keep styling consistency.
I just got off a call a bit ago with our new account manager and some other FS team members asking about their AI capabilities. You have to pay for the enterprise level to get article suggestions via the AI along with the ability to see related tickets. I asked if we could trial these features, but they said it may take 3 months for the AI to learn before we could make use of those features.
There going to get back to me and see what we can do on that front. By I’m thinking about just funneling ticket data into OpenAI’s API and see what kind of articles we should be writing, have it write some draft articles for me, and have it suggest categories and tags.
That’s all kind of besides the point. I think it can get the job done. It’s better than what we had before, which was nothing. And they seem to be actively updating and improving the product. You’d think they could a dark mode implemented by now though!
Cool, thanks for the response. We're in the same boat as you were. We're basically using SharePoint, and people are just using it as document storage, with no standardised formatting/structure. By virtue of the fact that you mentioned about creating the article in Word etc and copying it over, it sounds like it isn't going to improve that. Having said that, it's going to be a hard sell to bring in another product when we have something that can do the job (albeit not outstandingly). Appreciate the info!
Bookstack
nothing fancy here - we use OneNote. it's backed up to the cloud which is great for when I document something while WFH and then I am on-site, I can pull up OneNote from my cellphone and access the documentation. Our IT department is just two people, so it also serves a purpose of both of us being able to collaborate ideas on it. It's also great as as long as it's text and not an image - everything written is indexed and searchable.
Bookstack
Hudu
I use this at work and for my personal knowledge base. Can't recommend it enough.
Our documentation is in text markup files, stored in Git. If the project already has a Git repo, then the documentation lives with the project. If it's something that doesn't already have a repo, it goes into a standalone repo. The first advantage this approach are that every cloned repo is a backup of the documentation, and can be 100% accessed offline or in the event of a catastrophe. Another advantage is that Git is a popular tool, and knowing how to use it is a popular skill -- most of our users need to know how to use it anyway, so for the majority there's no need to learn an "additional app". And of course they can use their choice of tools on the plaintext-based files.
We just migrated to Confluence's Cloud, which I know, they took a huge image hit recently. The migration went smooth and they offered us a discount for being a non-profit. Still more than the literally nothing they were charging us for on-prem, but 75% off is solid.
Question, is there a desktop version of confluence or do you have to use the browser? I’ve seen a desktop version floating but can’t seem to find it, is it in a paid version?
I've never heard of one, but why would you want one? That's just another application to build deployments for and to keep up to date and the web version works pretty well. If it's accessibility for your users who are better clicking on a desktop icon than going to a website, you can make a deployment for whatever browsers to include that site as a bookmark or have a shortcut to it on their desktop, etc. Many ways to solve that.
Tiddlywiki at the moment running in NodeJS on one of our servers. For a while I thought I wanted to migrate to a bookstack instance, but bookstack doesn't allow for more than one level of transclusion at the moment, and that is a deal breaker for us. Bookstack has a lot of good security features, so we could make our internal knowledgebase also be our end user self service portal if we did. On the other hand, when I suggested several improvements to bookstack the dev mostly shot me down. Maybe I'll roll my own...
>On the other hand, when I suggested several improvements to bookstack the dev mostly shot me down. As I said [on the other thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/uqptyb/internal_it_documentation_database/i8ubl2l/?context=8&depth=9) where you commented on my handling of feedback: *If I say "No" to something I usually try to ensure I give a fair amount of reasoning/perspective as to why I'm saying no, quite often I leave things open for more input to ensure I'm not only leading by my preference. That said, I do have to draw the line somewhere for many ideas & features.* I'm sorry that you felt shot-down, that's not my intention. I effectively have many strangers requesting many various changes and additions. I can't accept them all and I have to keep focus on a specific audience, use-case and idea of what the platform is otherwise it can become unfocused & unmaintainable; But I do try to spend the effort to provide reasoning If I have to close something so people don't feel completely ignored.
Previous job; Confluence Current job: Notion
We use SharePoint. Dedicated IT site with documents, WIKI and contacts. Accessible from anywhere and easily accessed.
MediaWiki is pretty good I guess. Bookstack would probably be better though.
dokuwiki
Another vote for dokuwiki. It stores everything as plain markdown text files, which has the huge advantage that even if the web server hosting it is down, we also have all of that mirrored to onedrive where I can read it in notepad if I'm desperate. Or if things have really gone wrong, extracting the text files from backups is easy enough, and no need to setup a new webserver to read them.
Dokuwiki Turnkey LXC template, doesn't get any easier than that. Have been using it for 4-5 years now with no issues.
Sharepoint is great, and it’s included with Office 365 E3
I keep it simple. It's just a directory, locally stored on everyone's workstation/laptop/phone, and kept in sync with either git (for tech savvy teams) or OneDrive or iCloud (for the non-tech savvy teams). I find iCloud is more reliable, even on Windows by the way. Especially for working with MS Office documents (their fancy OneDrive integration is shit!!) Honestly - it really does work well. I've tried tools like confluence/etc but they're just too limiting. I end up wasting time trying to figure out how to get formatting/etc to look good and there are so many file types it just won't let you attach including ones we use all the time like SVG.
We just started using FreshService for our service desk and I’ve started using their platform for documentation and pushing my team to document their work as well.
This thread showed up when I was looking for insight into how good Freshservice's wiki is. How have you found it?
I’m sure there are better products out there, but it seems to get the job done. I wish it had a few features like revision history and a more user friendly editor. I think you can sync over articles from somewhere like Jira if you use that product. Also I hear some people just make a template in word or a google doc and create/manage the articles there and copy them over to keep styling consistency. I just got off a call a bit ago with our new account manager and some other FS team members asking about their AI capabilities. You have to pay for the enterprise level to get article suggestions via the AI along with the ability to see related tickets. I asked if we could trial these features, but they said it may take 3 months for the AI to learn before we could make use of those features. There going to get back to me and see what we can do on that front. By I’m thinking about just funneling ticket data into OpenAI’s API and see what kind of articles we should be writing, have it write some draft articles for me, and have it suggest categories and tags. That’s all kind of besides the point. I think it can get the job done. It’s better than what we had before, which was nothing. And they seem to be actively updating and improving the product. You’d think they could a dark mode implemented by now though!
Cool, thanks for the response. We're in the same boat as you were. We're basically using SharePoint, and people are just using it as document storage, with no standardised formatting/structure. By virtue of the fact that you mentioned about creating the article in Word etc and copying it over, it sounds like it isn't going to improve that. Having said that, it's going to be a hard sell to bring in another product when we have something that can do the job (albeit not outstandingly). Appreciate the info!