New Features
SharePoint Wikis already offer a range of features to help you work effectively within a team. The BlueBridge Wiki Extensions for Microsoft SharePoint add extra functionality to give you even more productivity. The following documents will give you a good overview of the differences between the standard wikis and the BlueBridge Wiki Extensions:
Feature Overview
Click on the following links to view the datasheets for the BlueBridge Wiki Extensions:
PDF Export
Wikis are an excellent way of managing technical documentation like user manuals, specifications and guidelines. Use the BlueBridge Wiki Extensions to export content to PDF, allowing you to share them with customers, partners and colleagues.
By using XSL-Transformations, you can even adapt the look and feel of your exports so that your documentation appears in your company colours and design.
Navigation
The Wiki Extensions enable you to add chapter numbers to your articles, allowing you to structure your information more formally.
Combining this with the PDF Export functionality gives you a powerful tool to create structured documentation within just a few clicks and share it just as quickly.
The navigation web part then gives you the opportunity to guide your SharePoint users through the content, making sure that they take in the information in the right order.
Enhanced Editor
Make it easier for your users to create wiki content with the enhanced editor, which unlocks new productivity tools for editing wiki articles in SharePoint, such as:
- Upload images quickly and display them in lightboxes
- Icon galleries (e.g. keyboard buttons)
- Dynamic table of contents based on headings within an article
Please note that there are differences between the Wiki Extensions for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. Please see our downloads section for more detailed information.
Wiki Reports
When you've been using wikis for a while, they start to become a little more complex and it's hard to keep an eye on which articles are linked to others. That's why we introduced the wiki reports, allowing you to see wiki links at a glance. Reports can be shown in a table format or as a visual representation of the links.
Lifecycle Management
If you want to make sure that your content is always up to date, the lifecycle management feature is a great way of doing this. Articles are automatically defined as obsolete after a certain amount of time, with automatic reminders to let you know when an article is about to expire. The time period and recipients for the reminders can be set for each library.
Re-Use Content
In many cases, particularly with specifications, you will want to use the same structure again and again. The BlueBridge Wiki Extensions for Microsoft SharePoint offer a template function to help you re-use predefined structures, creating a complete wiki library based on the original.
Additionally, you can use snippets to define chunks of text (including tables and images) that can be pasted into new and existing articles. This is especially helpful to define standard article layouts or to add special text like legal information/industry standards that have to be exactly right.
Syntax Highlighting
Wikis are an excellent choice for documentation, and with the Wiki Extensions you can even document your code. Simply select the code, and then the language you'd like to format it in. The text will then be colour-coded to allow you to read the code more easily. The formatting is achieved without changing the underlying HTML, so you don't have to worry about your code being altered to show the formatting.
Discuss Articles
Deciding on permissions for SharePoint wikis can be tricky. Should everyone have edit rights, or just a select group of authors?
The BlueBridge Wiki Extensions allow you to connect a discussion forum to your wiki, meaning that users can comment on articles without needing edit permissions on the article itself.
Discussions can be displayed next to the article by using our auto webparts feature, or by integrating them into an Enterprise Wiki Page Layout.