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Data Storage Software

Knowledge Management for an IT Department? 90

Posted by Cliff from the improve-your-staff's-organizational-skillz dept.
Laurentiu asks: "In every IT department out there there's a wealth of heterogenous information floating around: code snippets, HOWTOs, FAQs, docs, spreadsheets, post-it notes etc. Asking Joe where he put that file won't work forever. So what is, in your experience, a good way to manage this knowledge? And what software would you recommend for such a task?"
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Knowledge Management for an IT Department? More

Knowledge Management for an IT Department?

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  • Mac OS X's Spotlight does a pretty fine job of sifting through documents quick enough. Just commit everything to electronic form and give'r. Things need not be "organized", just indexed.

  • Bongos. (Score:2, Funny)

    by riffzifnab ( 449869 )
    Bongos.

  • MediaWiki (Score:5, Informative)

    by akmolloy ( 686919 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:37PM (#13681812)
    We've been using MediaWiki for this exact purpose: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki [mediawiki.org]. It's easy to install, a snap to manage, and makes it easy to share your knowledge with the rest of the world if that's something you want to do.

    • Re:MediaWiki (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bistronaut ( 267467 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @11:04PM (#13681956) Homepage Journal
      The engineering company I work for uses MediaWiki as well. It is perfect for storing all sorts of random information. All those "knowledge management" apps that try to categorize all your info in one fixed structure always end up being more work to maintain, and there's always information that just doesn't fit into the system. Wikis are easier to organize (therefore easier to get information out of) and easier to get information into as well. I tried some of the other Wikis, but MediaWiki ended up being easier to install and more powerful to boot.

      • Re:MediaWiki (Score:3, Funny)

        by DaoudaW ( 533025 )
        MediaWiki ended up being easier to install and more powerful to boot.

        Okay, I give up ... I've installed a wiki before, but how do you boot a wiki?
    • Did you check out any other wikis before selecting MediaWiki? I've been using a personal wiki (Instiwiki) for work, but the features of the various wikis have been putting me off making a good permanent selection for our staff (MediaWiki isn't heavy on access restrictions, but it has a lot of features that the other ones don't have).
      • At my company one of the tools used is TWiki. It does the job quite well, but I don't have any comparison to other wikis (except for being the user of MediaWiki - Wikipedia)
      • There are some access restrictions but not very fine grained. I actually found many hacks that are not in the main tree that have helped. One good example is haveing the site template a wiki page.

    • Re:MediaWiki (Score:4, Informative)

      by Shewmaker ( 28126 ) on Friday September 30, 2005 @01:03AM (#13682364) Homepage
      I haven't set up MediaWiki, but my coworkers and I chose MoinMoin [wikiwikiweb.de] because it doesn't require a database. We've been pleased with its ease of use, speed, and stability.

      They have a Wiki Engine Comparison [wikiwikiweb.de] page that was useful for helping us decide which one best fit our needs.

  • We... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When we need to know something at work, we call TripMaster Monkey! He knows everything!

  • Post everything to usenet (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then search with Google Groups. There are thousands of abdanoned groups out there for you to choose from.
  • I don't have any system in place for knowledge management, but when someone comes to me and says they can't find a file, I ssh to our backup server, which holds every revision of every file ever stored on all our file servers, and use the locate utility to find the file.
  • Sounds like something that's perfect for a Wiki on an IT intranet.

  • Wiki (Score:3)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:44PM (#13681855) Homepage
    I also see a Wiki as the best solution here, it gives a group a chance to get all those bits somewhere centralized and all the ability to flesh them out as time goes on. I'm in the process of setting up my first Wiki at work.

    If security is a concern look for a business suited Wiki like TWIKI (twiki.org) which includes access levels and such.

    • At my last job, we had a pretty busy on-call week (maybe ten pages a day), and most "weird" problems would be handled by the on-call person. We had a simple script to log all on-call problems and solutions. The script would throw you into a vi session with a template (date/time paged, server(s) impacted, resolution, etc.); this on-call log would be mailed to all the SAs nightly, and also to a mail account that existed solely to store these logs. Every month that mail file would be archived under the name
    • TikiWiki ( http://tikiwiki.org/ [tikiwiki.org]) does a nice job of handling lots of different types of info, from Wiki pages via FAQs, Forums, Calendars, Shared Files and Pictures to Blogs and RSS feeds. It also allows you to send queries to your legacy databases and has a webmail interface (which even allows you to request/send Wiki pages by email !) The whole thing is nicely packaged for you to turn off the modules you don't (yet) need - using it with different customers and internally. And no, I don't have any business

  • Google (Score:4, Informative)

    by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:44PM (#13681857) Homepage Journal
    Beleive it or not, Google Desktop search has saved me many a minutes of searching for opps manuals, work orders, business rule documents, log files, and many other assorted goodies. I'm not recommending it as a long term solution, but it works for short/mid range for small shops where the presure is on development.

    -Rick
    • I have to agree with this one, especially the Enterprise version that llows for searching Lotus Note (yes, we're stuck using Notes.)

      Google's Desktop search really works well for me, is very fast, and has saved me TONS of time loooking for information. And the fact that it'll also index mapped network drives is a boon.

  • Ask IBM! (Score:1, Informative)

    by nicholasperez ( 249531 )
    http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/27/95759/4240 [kuro5hin.org] -- just be sure you have millions upon millions of dollars and at least twice the amount of time you really need. Other than that, it should be a simple deal!
  • The most important thing is to convince/allow people to spend time on internal documentation. If you can do this, it doesn't much matter what format the documentation is in, perhaps in a wiki or just version-controlled flat text.

  • Ahem (Score:2, Informative)

    by hostpure ( 918706 )
    http://www.google.com/enterprise/ [google.com] Works wonders, all the power of google in a little box and anyone in the office *should* be able to use the search features :)

  • Use a Wiki - MoinMoin (Score:3, Interesting)

    by egriebel ( 177065 ) * <edgriebel AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:54PM (#13681919) Journal
    As some have said already, and many more will, a Wiki works well for unstructured knowledge. We had one where I worked last and it was good for brain dumps. Unfortunately, people mostly brain-dumped when they were leaving the company or they were very bored or were looking for something to help procrastinate. We even used it to keep track of on-call schedules.

    Software: moin-moin http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/ [wikiwikiweb.de]. It worked well enough, easy to install, and it was easy to set up credentials and permissions for groups on the diretory and page level for editing and even visibility. It's easy to get in and make simple changes to the code and there's a bunch of modules available of varying quality, though.

    Funny anecdote, our group's manager pulled a Lundberg: "I uhh like the program and it works well, but is there a WYSIWYG editor for it?" [Although somewhat idiosyncratic, Wiki markup is trivial to learn and use, HTML looks like C++ in comparison.]

    • And if you fail to learn the markup, just do your brain dump unformatted. Later, when someone cares enough about the information, they can format it.

      My manager is constantly frustrated that he doesn't know enough HTML to change the font in UseMod Wiki, and I keep reminding him that he is wasting his time trying to nitpick the fucking font on a single page in a website used by 10 people. He may as well ask for the icon in cornflower blue.
    • > Wiki markup is trivial to learn and use, HTML looks like C++ in comparison.

      Still, to someone in accounting, hr or marketing it can be too much to ask. Sure, the original question pertained to IT depts, but in order to leverage to a whole company, a simple WYSIWIG editor would mean improvement by an order of magnitude.
    • Funny anecdote, our group's manager pulled a Lundberg: "I uhh like the program and it works well, but is there a WYSIWYG editor for it?" [Although somewhat idiosyncratic, Wiki markup is trivial to learn and use, HTML looks like C++ in comparison.]

      Sure, wiki markup is pretty simple but I wish there was a standard wiki language. They all seem to use different markup. Plus, sometimes the simplistic wiki markup can be limiting in the type of formatting that it allows you to do.

      This looks interesting:
      http://ww [wikiwyg.net]

  • Search (Score:4, Insightful)

    by deodato ( 64774 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @10:54PM (#13681920)
    I reckon the people suggesting Google are on the right track. For better or worse, search is how people navigate heterogenous information these days and I think you are wasting time if you try and work out some highfallutin classification system.

    Doesn't have to be Google though - there are a pile of tools (htdig etc) that you can use to crawl your kb and provide a basic search ui.
    • Umm, why was this moderated flamebait? He just gave you two very viable solutions: HtDig (which is, by the way, FREE); Buy a google appliance for your intranet (set you back about $10K).
    • I hope this was an error.
    • Inside that pile of tools - EnterFind Search Appliance. Disclaimer: I participated in its development and plug them in my sig.
      More features than Google one and cheaper too. Searches network shares, FTP and web sites and now databases and soon archived CDs/DVDs.

  • At the risk of making this sound like an advertisement...

    For the past 1 year, my company has been working on a solution for in-house knowledge management and collaboration/groupware for an organization. Our solution integrates the above with SMS notification, SyncML synchronization (calendar, contact list and todo list) for mobile devices as well as a web based email system. Since we develop it in-house, we are able to customize it for our clients.

    If you're looking for a commercial product, you can find

  • Plone Help Center (Score:4, Informative)

    by Xenophon Fenderson, ( 1469 ) <xenophon+slashdot@irtnog.org> on Thursday September 29, 2005 @11:44PM (#13682112) Homepage

    While we are probably going to end up with SharePoint (which isn't a bad collaboration tool if all your fellow staff members know is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), I personally like the Plone Help Center [plone.org]. You can see examples on the Plone web site [plone.org] or on my personal web site [irtnog.org].

  • usenet? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday September 29, 2005 @11:55PM (#13682162)
    I always liked the idea of simple ascii commentary on ideas. and if you need to refer to something, well, use a link - people will 'get' that even if their ascii browsers don't.

    I started in vax/vms with 'vaxnotes' and there was the notion of a base topic and its replies. it was simple, but it held the knowledge of DEC in a reasonable fashion, for many people, for many years.

    then in the unix world, there was nntp/usenet. same basic idea. and also ascii-based. it scaled well and it worked well (and was well understood and simple enough to manage).

    its worth considering. you can enable 'news' on linux boxes as clients (browsers) and servers. people can add (and edit and delete) content and its simple, free and best of all, it works.

  • Sudden adoption of WIKI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Centurix ( 249778 ) <centurixNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday September 30, 2005 @12:36AM (#13682278) Homepage
    After taking over the developement for a telemarketing application, with no prior documentation, I immediately started a Wiki using OpenWIKI (they lean towards Microsoft servers for their stuff, so a basic IIS installation is all I had to work with), I convinced the admin guy to give me web space on it plus their SQL server, installed it and started entering everything I came across as I was either fixing or adding stuff. After about 3 months pretty much the entire system was documented to some degree, from the UI to nearly every technical aspect. Then, one of the execs found it, figured out how to add stuff, and now 8 months later it's probably 25% my stuff, and 75% is now full of up to date company practice and communication.
  • I've been using for about a year a directory where I put a file named after each host I maintain. I and other admins add numbered entries about every non-trivial change we make, with timestamps. If there are machines with identical configuration, there is a file caled abcde.common that lists their common config. A wiki isn't a bad idea either, I guess.
  • I see several recommendations of Wikis, and I personally love the idea, but in a typical department/team setting, you end up woth email, Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, HTML, .txt, .rtf, and a host of other files and file types generated for various reasons. Can any of the existing Wiki apps include these types of files? What I'm looking for is an app to not only catalog and store these files (ala Wiki) but also index the content (ala Google Desktop) so that the information contained within the files is eas
    • Some can, but if you're a competent IT department you won't have important knowledge in them (The ones I can think of that might be needed are excel (service data), and visio (network diagrams)) and most wiki's allow attachments to pages fro that reason.

      As for big repositories of say PDF manuals a good old directory tree is fine:
      Manuals/
      Manufacturer/
      Model/
      manual.pdf
    • We're just trying out Perspective [high-beyond.com], a .net wiki. It is supposed to have features for searching over office documents. As a lot of our documentation exists in odds and ends word files, this is why we're trying it out. Of course, there's only two people in our IT department so we can get away with more adhoc solutions.

      I think the search is built on top of some windows indexing service, so presumably it has whatever limitations that has in terms of document types.
    • Far be it from me to recommend Microsoft products, but...if you're primarily a Windows shop, there's SharePoint, which is sort of a Wiki.
  • Without the risk of making this an advertisement... :)
    My friend,for the past year has been creating a group collaboration/knowledgebase/project management/messaging/file management/group productivity software that will enable users to store and share information in a free-form, secure, linkable, fully searchable and easily updateable knowledge base that's perfect for jotting and sharing all sorts of information. Create a page on any topic at all; add pictures and links. Editing a page is just like using a

  • The answer is not software. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheOriginalRevdoc ( 765542 ) on Friday September 30, 2005 @01:15AM (#13682393) Journal
    Ideal solution: hire a good librarian. (Or "knowledge manager", as they prefer to be known.)

    Google, Wiki, Notes and similar machinery are all well and good, but if you just let everybody stuff documents into the system, you'll end up with a large, undifferentiated heap of files in a dozen or more different formats. Ever tried searching for an Excel workbook with Wiki? A Visio file? An obscure CAD package file? An old CD-ROM of critical documentation in a proprietary format?

    Managing documents is quite hard to do - fairly close to programming in terms of the skills needed. It doesn't happen on its own. It requires a cluey person who understands the business and the documents, who can classify and index the material as it comes in, and record where it is so that it can be found.

    At the very least, it's a process that requires considerable thought, planning, and management. It needs to be viewed in that light - not "which search engine should I use?"
    • Actually it may be in the software because unfortunately you quote proprietary formats. Excel, Word and ppt can be searched with the various tools that will convert them to html. (Lotus Notes does this automatically).

      There are many ways to share information - wikis. bbs, lotus notes, exchange folders etc. Unfortunately many of them require a cultural change. In many companies everyone hords info and stores it in their my documents or email. Any solution that you implement in this case will ultimately fail.
    • I must de-lurk for this topic.

      My company is currently centralizing all of its IT functions from the 42 Europe-wide sites it has. Knowledge management is a nightmare, as the institutional knowledge is spread too thin among the old timers to make any impact for the new people. We have some processes documented, but by far not all of them. We decided we needed a written repository of knowledge, as we are growin at a rate where we can not afford to waste time.

      We finally decided on MediaWiki, just like some of t
    • I'm a lawyer, not an engineer, so my perspective might be different, but knowledge management is critical in my job. I completely agree that the ideal solution is to hire a knowledge manager, but they aren't really librarians in the dictionary sense because they need to know the knowledge they're managing (I know you point this out, but I wanted to expand). At my firm, we have both librarians and knowledge management people. The knowledge managers (we have both corporate and litigation managers) are lawy
  • It seems to me like these may work for you:

    http://www.ktdms.com/ [ktdms.com] -- Open Source
    or
    http://www.docushare.com/ [docushare.com] -- $$$$$$$$ Xerox $$$$$$$$

  • Enterprise Wiki (Score:2, Interesting)

    by burcarpat ( 759604 )
    My favorite: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ [atlassian.com]
    Confluence is just software ($4K + $2k/year); no hardware or hosting.

    From the founders of Excite: http://www.jotspot.com/ [jotspot.com]
    Jotspot sells hosting w/ SSL ($9-$250/month) or remotely maintained appliances ($10K-$15K/year); no software.

    BusinessWeek's choice: http://www.socialtext.com/ [socialtext.com]
    Socialtext sells software and hardware but no hosting (Can't remember the price range right now).

    You might also want to look into search appliances such as Google's enterprise

  • Some suggestions (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ahh the age old IT Department issue. How do I proactively manage and capture our information.

    I'm still grappling with this. I've had some success in a previous company using TWiki to capture basic documentation. Its biggest drawback was a lack of document management. That said, the documentation I put in there is still being referred to and used. I think they were looking at moving to documentum (as a seperate project within the company) and were looking to see what wiki style functionality they could
  • Where I work, I have set up a Wiki (MoinMoin on Python twisted webserver), and it works well. We even use it for storing files (spreadsheets, scripts etc.) by using the attachment feature. MoinMoin's search is slow, so you might need some other indexing solution. We use Microsoft Index server to index the files (our Windows file server had it installed, and it wasn't very hard to set up).
  • The new 2.1 release is pretty sweet. Has everything you can ask for from an open source CMS.
    There is a special product, Plone Help Center, that can help you organize things. Have multiple PHCs (they act as folders), and you can categorize things based on meta-subjects. You can even use it to index and search your doc/pdf/xls files.

    Hope this helps :)
  • Disclaimer -- my company wrote this product -- http://www.productionmanuals.com/ [productionmanuals.com]. We wrote it for making manufacturing documentation easier, but I've been using it to document the product itself. It's a lot easier to use than word or acrobat for actually getting things written down, and since it keeps everything in one place you never lose it. Is something like that useful for your situation?

  • Departmental Gmail account (Score:4, Insightful)

    by therblig ( 543426 ) on Friday September 30, 2005 @08:35AM (#13683455)
    We set up a departmental Gmail account. Then, if someone comes across something useful, they can send it to the Gmail account. We obviously don't keep sensitive information on there, but it is good for almost everything else. The nice thing about the Gmail account is that it is easily searched, people at any location can get to it, and the only effort required is actually adding the information to it. If someone is anal-retentive enough to want to organize it, he is free to use labels, but so far, the searching has been adequate for everyone.

  • Google search appliance... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by haplo21112 ( 184264 ) <haplo@ep[ ]na.com ['ith' in gap]> on Friday September 30, 2005 @08:59AM (#13683589) Homepage
    ...I have been thinking about this alot where I work...or current knowledge managment solution...well in a word SUCKS! Whatever you do stay away from Peregrine(hp soon) Get.Answers....

    I have done a basica architecting of a solution that I think would work excellently. Its all based off a Google Search appliance...dump the docs in a few directories tell the Mini google to go to town....

    Now users can google for what they need!
  • In my development group, we store all our quick-reference material, equipment operation notes, etc. in a KB called LORE, available for about $100 at http://www.pineappletechnologies.com/products/lore / [pineapplet...logies.com]. It's written in PHP, and you get the source code. Very powerful. Our vendor-supplied PDF's, etc., go in a well-defined directory structure.
  • Four steps
    (1)ditch microsoft office & outlook
    (2)make everything visible
    (3)make everything shareable
    (4)taxonomy is knowledge glue

    I just did this for all new projects, the solution is Drupal. Every project and sizeable task gets a chunk of taxonomy then you can catch the conversations in blogs, forums, wherever. All new, popular and recommended stuff is shown on a personal front page modelled on the DC.GOV website. All of this is also RSSified so it can go anywhere and be seen on a cellphone. There

  • The obvious commercial solutions are the IBM Workplace or Domino family of products (if you want multi-platform browser-based access), and Lotus Notes (if you're a Windows shop and like the rich client).

    The main advantages over wikis are security (transparent encryption and strong authentication), replication (set up local servers at each site for speed, and have them replicate data), indexing of Office and other proprietary file formats, a more sophisticated user interface, commercial support, and ability
    • Don't forget about the IBM DB2 Content Management [ibm.com] portfolio. It provides a lot of features from access restriction, peer approval, and a nice easy to program interface (document manager). And with all the government regulations popping up, a company may need to make certain documents a part of the company records, which can then not be altered.

      There are several comparable products that are less expensive as well, like FileNet [filenet.com] that can do similar type of functions.
  • In my experience software doesn't work. At least not in any standard "we're not hiring more people, find the time" IT shop I've worked at. What does seem to work is vacations. Always have a secondary for a given task. When the primary goes on vacation, it's a great time to transfer vital know-how. Further, during the layoff, plenty of the little tidbits surface that need to get transfered and can be after the primary returns.

  • tilting at windmills (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Clover_Kicker ( 20761 ) <clover_kicker@yahoo.com> on Friday September 30, 2005 @12:14PM (#13685674)
    Writing good documentation is hard work. I've never had a job where I had time to produce good documentation.

    Why should I produce good documentation anyway? So it's easier for you to fire me? What's in it for me?

    I document the bare minimum and keep the rest in my head. My crib notes are so cryptic they might as well be Swahili to anyone else.

    Oh, but the boss is insisting I write some documentation. No problem [kuro5hin.org].

    Theoretically you could use the linked article to help you write good documentation, but I've never seen it happen.

    If you really want to capture the state of your IT department, you need to lock everyone in a room with a gigantic whiteboard and start diagraming your systems. Get someone to take notes or digicam pictures or something. Encourage questions and heckling.

    Edit those notes into something useable and let everyone criticize them. Once everyone is happy, do it again for the next system.

    The above takes way too much time, so no-one ever has a complete picture of what/where/why/when.

    • People have mentioned many documentation tools in this thread. Any or all of these tools would produce excellent documentation if you have the co-operation of all your IT staff.

      The best tool in the world won't save you if your people aren't using it.

    • Why should I produce good documentation anyway? So it's easier for you to fire me? What's in it for me?

      I know a guy who knows a guy that had this same attitude. He would never document anything he did, keeping it all in his head, for job security. After a while he started wondering why he never got promoted. They couldn't promote him because no one else in the department could take over for him due to the lack of documentation.

      In my experience, doing a good job (part of which is documenting what y
      • re promotion, the easiest way to get a raise/promotion is to change jobs anyway.

        Also, take a closer look at the linked article - it's about producing bad documentation that looks good. The whole idea is to fool your boss.

        > In my experience, doing a good job (part of which is
        > documenting what you do) is the closest thing you'll ever get
        > to job security. If they want to fire you, they'll always find
        > a way.

        Sure, and they'll have a terrible time re-learning a bunch of things. You can't eat schad

  • Bondage (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Webmoth ( 75878 )
    You could always shackle a leg to the desk.

    As long as they don't wear prosthetics.
  • xwiki = very cool and powerful- has db backend, attachments, versioning, scripting langauge, and security, RSS feeds, online diffs, one click rollbacks. webnotes = for those who cannot part with the postit paradigm - free form postits in a browser - kinda cool. tiddlywiki = for those who want a personal wiki that runs off your USB drive - really way of editing and storing data. When you leave a company you take your wiki knowledge with you. :) http://www.xwiki.org/ [xwiki.org] http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ [tiddlywiki.com] http://www. [aypwip.org]
  • xwiki = very cool and powerful- has db backend, attachments, versioning, scripting langauge, and security, RSS feeds, online diffs, one click rollbacks.

    webnotes = for those who cannot part with the postit paradigm - free form postits in a browser - kinda cool.

    tiddlywiki = for those who want a personal wiki that runs off your USB drive - really way of editing and storing data. When you leave a company you take your wiki knowledge with you. :)

    http://www.xwiki.org/ [xwiki.org]
    http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ [tiddlywiki.com]
    http://www.aypwip.o [aypwip.org]
  • An IT department has a lot of different functions: leadership, project managers, developers, etc. in need of tracking lots of different pieces of information and knowledge artifacts (plans, documentation, code, etc.).

    To find out what you need, analyse what is out there. How people/groups store information now. How is knowledge exchanged ? Where are the communication/documentation/knowledge transfer shortcomings ?

    Try not to go down the path to create extensive, high maintenance directory structures. Use meta

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