The local knowledge base of the organization on the wiki engine

Introduction

A year and a half ago I came to work in the technical support of a branch of a large all-Russian company. Before this, I was not engaged in technical support, I could, of course, reinstall, configure the OS, or configure the simplest network, but didn’t go deep into it. With the accumulation of knowledge, it became necessary to systematize and maintain them. At first I had a special daddy where I put the usual Word and Excel documents. Over time, a lot of documents have accumulated in the folder, the search for the necessary information began to take quite some time. I didn’t work alone, so some files needed to be kept in open access, for example, a list of users, from time to time I had to look for information needed by other employees. When administrators started a new user, I put it in a table, which also contained details for remote access to his computer (it’s not all the time to go to workplaces when there are more than 300 users). The actual file was always only in one copy, other technical support staff had copies that could not be the same if one of the employees connected a person or changed network details, and then forgot to report it.
Over time, the idea emerged that all this should be combined and stored in one place so that all technical support staff have access to information, the ability to edit it and add it.

The idea of ​​creating my own little Wikipedia, dedicated only to my work, did not come immediately, and demanded a long implementation, since it was done at work, and there was not much time left to fill it. It was interesting that, according to the job description, there should have been a knowledge base in which we had to look for answers to users' questions, but in reality it did not exist.

First pancake

Before that, I knew little about creating websites, so the first step, installation, was probably the most difficult for me. The first version worked on the Mediawiki engine and was installed on Denwer. But there were some problems with the installation, so the site did not last long, about 2 weeks and died after trying to create a correspondence table for printers and cartridges for them (One of the most important documents, by the way). The table was not created in any way, all the time there were problems with displaying borders and contents, googling and detailed readings of the manual resulted in nothing. Over time, I realized that the Mediawiki engine was too much for such a project, it was too powerful, it required a lot of settings, which I could not do because of my ignorance.
The next couple of months I didn’t work on the site, so the next time I decided to do everything thoroughly and finally finish off the problem.
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Second pancake

Having recollected my old failures, having gained experience, I decided to start everything all over again. The first question was the choice of the engine for the site. After sitting for a couple of hours on the Wikipedia page with wiki engines , having tested some of them, I decided to stop at Dokuwiki . This engine is small, fairly light, works without a database, has documentation in Russian and a lot of modules.
As a result, the knowledge base had to include information about users (contact information, network details), programs (path to the distribution kit, instructions, problem solving), equipment (where to get drivers, again problems with this very equipment).

Dokuwiki installation is even easier than installing other CMS. For me, the main difficulty was in the subsequent setup. For example, editing the .htaccess file so that the links are beautiful, as well as the inclusion of transliteration, so that the links are readable (otherwise they turn into a set of characters). All information in Dokuwiki is stored inside files and folders, without using a database, so transliteration is important in order to be able to understand where everything is, if it is installed on windows systems, UTF-8 is encoded on ubuntu, therefore Cyrillic link names are normally displayed , both in the system and on the site.

The next step was to install the theme for the site. This is also quite important for usability. I advise you to choose a theme with a left panel (sidebar), where it is convenient to place the menu. This leftmost panel is edited with a regular wiki page. The theme is installed by copying the template into a special folder, after which it is possible to select it in the administration menu.

Expansion of functionality occurs due to the installation of additional plug-ins, of which there is a lot. Installing plug-ins is as follows: there is a link to it, then in the special section of the admin menu this link is indicated, then the Dokuwiki plug-in will download and install, you just have to configure it from . Plugins can be turned on and off at any time.

Creating a page in Dokuwiki can be done as follows: specify a link to a non-existent inside an existing page and follow it, then the system will say that there is no such page, and will offer to create it, this is very convenient, because on the site you can write the names of pages in Russian, in the system they will periodically get the name using translit. In the following, it will be possible to use in the references both the usual name and the name in transliteration. Editing content is done with the help of a convenient editor, the functionality of which is also extended by plugins. The syntax of the engine is very simple, the basics can be remembered for a couple of hours of work with the site, so you do not have to refer to the syntax help section. Even if you forget something later, the syntax link is on the page for creating and editing documents.

The generated pages are stored in directories called “Namespaces” (namespaces). In the operating system, each directory is one folder, the pages are stored in text documents, so that they can be edited without using a browser (the main thing is that access rights are not lost). For each page, the history of its changes is stored, as in any wiki site, you can quickly roll back if the current edition is not satisfied.

After getting acquainted with the Dokuwiki syntax and creating the first articles, a new question arose - how to restrict anonymous access to the site, because the situation is not very good, if the user logs in and reads something unflattering in his opinion, let's not forget that there are people who are not friends with the computer, and with technical support staff too, so there can be anything in the description, even though the site has its own rules. In Mediawiki, everything was decided by manually editing the configuration file, in Dokuwiki for this case, a convenient system for controlling access to various sections and even individual articles is embedded. I simply blocked access to the section with users for anonymous users. For authorized users, which are technical support employees, access remains. So now you can enter the site even from the user's workplace to clarify any information.

Over time, a section with programs was created, then a section with equipment, and the user section is filled. A separate page was created for each user. Also pages were created for offices, with links to users and a description of equipment. Due to the fact that there are many pages of the same type in the system, it was necessary to somehow simplify their creation. The creators of Dokuwiki have already thought of me and made the content template mechanism. For example, in the “Users” folder in the system, the _template.txt file is placed, in which lies the template by which you need to fill in the user page. When creating a new page, all the data from this template falls into it, it remains only to add the necessary. The minus is only that the template cannot be created from the web interface directly, you have to create it directly within the folder manually, or rename the already created page.

Conclusion

Currently, the site has been working within the corporate network for a couple of months, it is gradually filling up, over time it is planned to connect the user base with Active Directory, it is also planned to improve the quality of the content so that new technical support staff will be easier to navigate the current place of work. The advantage of this system of knowledge base organization is its availability, ease of use, absolute free.