Printer Friendly Version

CustomerVision has discovered something about wikis that a lot of enterprise wiki vendors have yet to grasp: they scare the devil out of management. It's all that unregulated content, all those free and open public discussions. Imagine what could be said.

But, the company knows, they also play a pivotal role, especially for younger workers, by bridging the gap between e-mail and instant messaging software. They provide a public forum where ideas can be recorded, and also a free space where new concepts can develop. What was needed, the founders of CustomerVision saw, was a way to harness the power of the wiki in a way that management feels is safe.

The solution is BizWiki, CustomerVision's sole product. This just-enough wiki lets users collaborate but gives management control over what gets posted.

While the product feels especially timely, it actually began life four years ago, with the initial development. It then entered a "stealth" sales mode two years ago, selling to a limited number of customers while developers worked out the last kinks. It now serves over 100 customer and over 30,000 active users-not bad for a company that's only now officially launching. Businesses using it range from small offices to nonprofits to Fortune 500 companies.

BizWiki is a good fit for intranet developers, because it easily adapts to any internet or external site. Users can have it up and running in hours; the time-consuming part is filling your new pages with content. The administrator can easily modify the look of the wiki pages, so that they match that of the intranet.

When registered users view pages created with BizWiki, they see a small box with wiki controls somewhere on the page, usually in the top right corner. Depending on his or her permissions, the user might see options to edit the page, discuss it, view a page history, create a new page, or view recent changes. Most customers restrict these options so that readers can discuss but not edit a page. Discuss means to send a note to the person in charge of that page. The owner can then answer the comment privately (via e-mail) or make a public response on the page. In that way there's always a gatekeeper monitoring what gets posted on the wiki.

Using group permissions, administrators can easily limit who has full editing permissions, who can only discuss articles, and who can only read the content. It's an ideal solution for extranets, where you want people outside the company to be able to view pages, but not to edit them. Managers also have the option of creating completely open wikis for special creative groups or for projects, then moving those wikis into the larger intranet as the projects move along, in order to solicit comments from others.

Pricing for BizWiki ranges from $100 to $5,000 per month, and is based on a six-tiered system that looks at the size of the logged-in user base, but not the number of pages the company will create. The price is the same for both the hosted and installed versions of the product (so far the hosted version has been the more popular) and includes 24-7 technical support. The only extra is document storage, if needed.

With BizWiki, users see a small control box somewhere on wiki pages (here in the upper right corner) that holds the wiki controls. This user can discuss the page or see recent changes.

Printer Friendly Version

Other Resources

from Intranet Journal

Intranet Journal Discussion Board Central Desktop Offers Wikis Without the Wiki SocialText Sends Wikis on the Road

from JupiterWeb

Social Networking Comes to the Enterprise (EarthWeb News)

from the Web

CustomerVision