We recently added Discussion Forums to our Enterprise Wiki product, and we began to get requests in our demos for an explanation of when to use which collaboration tool. So, we wanted to share our take on how each of these valuable collaboration features could be used effectively in an organization.
WIKIS - Wikis are used primarily to capture knowledge and information. Wikis are intended to be living repositories that can be contributed to by everyone, which provides a more complete, accurate, and relevant view of key knowledge. Even though a wiki page should never be considered "complete" (changes happen all the time), they are meant to capture information that can be referenced for longer periods of time. In addition to knowledge management, shared content editing, notification, status reports, data collection, and project management are all excellent uses of a wiki.
BLOGS - Blogs are a great way to broadcast news or get quick feedback. Unlike wiki pages, blog posts are usually very time-sensitive, so they have less relevance as time passes. An example is that someone creates a blog post to comment on an article they found online. If that post was made a year ago and was about the soaring sales of Sport Utility Vehicles, that would have very little relevance today. There is interesting perspective to be found in historical blog posts, however. If someone brings up an idea that was shot down 2 years ago because of the feedback in blog comments, you can go back and see what the reasons were.
FORUMS - Forums organize complex conversations and help you make decisions. Email is terrible for complex conversations. How many times have you gotten an email blast that asks you to comment on 5 different bullet points- only to try to follow the responses from everyone else. And then having the main conversation breaks off into several side conversations- only a few of which you might care about. Forums solve that by following a trial of thought about each point in the discussion. Than, at the end of the conversation, you have a great resource to make decisions that you can be confident in- since everyone can participate and give their perspective.
We do believe that every team, department, and organization is different- so we encourage you to find as many ways to enhance collaboration as you possibly can. If you have specific questions about how to use these tools to improve your organization, just let us know!
