Wikis
1. What it is
Wikis gives your organization a structured, collaborative space for creating
and maintaining living documentation. Authors write pages using a rich-text
editor, organize them into a hierarchy of sub-pages, and tag them for
cross-cutting discovery. Built-in version history, edit locking, and content
freshness tracking keep the knowledge base accurate as it grows.
- Enablement: Wikis requires a license and is disabled by default. An admin
enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps. - What it is not: Wikis is not a file repository. For storing and sharing
files, folders, and external links, use Drive. For curated library
collections of company resources, use Libraries.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps and enable Wikis. The app appears in
the side navigation once enabled. - Open Wikis → Settings and review the default configuration. The most
important decisions are the Edit Lock Timeout (default 30 minutes) and
the Stale Wiki Threshold (default 120 days). - Optionally create one or more templates under Wikis → Templates.
Mark one as the default so a page started from New Wiki with no template
picked starts from it. Templates are
browsable by all users; only admins and Wikis app admins can create or edit
them. - Grant access. Everyone who can use the app can view published wikis; who
can create new pages is the Who can create a wiki page? setting (everyone,
by default). To delegate administrative tasks — settings, reordering, trash
recovery, template management — without granting a full admin role, assign
users as Wikis app admins under Admin → Apps → App Admins. - Confirm it works: create a test page, publish it, and verify it appears in
the browse tree and in Global Search (if the Include Wikis in Global
Search setting is on, which it is by default).
Silent-until-paired: the Notify on Wiki Publish setting is off by
default. Until you turn it on — and optionally pick a recipient group under
Settings — publishing a page does not notify anyone.
3. How it fits together
Pages, sub-pages, and the browse tree
Every wiki page can have sub-pages nested under it, up to 5 levels deep. The
browse screen shows a tree on the left and the selected page’s content on the
right. Admins can drag pages into a custom order; users can sort by most
recent, title, most viewed, or that custom order.
A page starts as a Draft (visible only to its creator and admins), moves to
Published (visible to everyone or to specific groups, depending on its
visibility setting), and can be Archived by its manager or an admin. Deleting
a page moves it to Trash along with all of its sub-pages, and the other people
who created those pages are told (in a very wide delete, only the deleted page’s
creator is). The page’s creator — or an admin — can restore it
from All Wikis ▾ → Trash, which brings its sub-pages back with it. Everyone
sees only what they may restore there: a member their own pages, a Wikis app
admin the pages they can read, a business admin everything.
Visibility and permissions
Each page carries three independent permission controls, set by its manager (its
creator, unless management was transferred) or an admin through the
Properties drawer:
- Visibility — who can read the page: Everyone (default), Specific
Groups (selected groups from Admin › Groups), or Only me (private to
the creator). - Edit permission — who can edit the content: Admin and Creator
(default) or Any User. Admins can always edit a page. - Comment permission — who can comment: Any User (default), Admin and
Creator, or Nobody — choose Nobody to turn commenting off entirely
for a page.
Additional per-page toggles: Allow Duplication (default on), Allow PDF
Export (default on, gated by the app-level PDF export setting), Show
Author (default on), Show Table of Contents (default on), and Lock
Editing (default off — prevents all member edits regardless of edit permission).
Edit locking
When someone opens a page for editing, the app acquires an edit lock. It keeps
renewing while the editor is open, and leaving the editor frees the page at
once; if the editor’s browser stops answering, the lock times out after the
Edit Lock Timeout (default 30 minutes). Another user trying to edit sees a
conflict dialog with the lock holder’s name, role, and avatar. From that
dialog they can:
- Ask edit — send the holder a request by mail (Send Mail) or, when
both of you can use Chat, Send in Chat, asking them to release the page. - Notify when free — subscribe to a notification that fires
when the lock is released or times out. - Break Lock (admins and Wikis app admins) — take the lock over at once;
the editor is told.
Leaving the editor, or the lock timing out, notifies anyone who subscribed.
Version history
Every publish or edit of a published page creates a numbered version.
Drafts do not create versions — they appear only once published. From
Wiki Tools › Version History, any viewer can browse the version timeline,
view the full content of any version, and compare any two versions side by side
with a line-level diff. Users with edit permission can restore an earlier
version, which creates a new version recording the restore.
Management transfers also appear in version history.
Tags
Tags are free-text labels (up to 50 characters each) that cut across the
page hierarchy. Filtering by a tag in the browse view shows a flat list of
matching pages regardless of where they sit in the tree.
Templates
Templates are admin-managed starting points for new pages. Each template has a
name, an optional category, a body, and optional icon, color, and cover image.
One template per organization can be marked as the default — a page started
from New Wiki starts from it unless the author picks a different template or
chooses to start blank. Pages added with Add sub-wiki, Ask AI or the browser
extension start blank. Every user can browse and preview templates; only
admins and Wikis app admins can create, edit, or delete them.
4. Running it
Reviewing the dashboard
The Wikis dashboard shows KPIs and widgets tailored to the viewer’s role:
- All users see their own wiki count, draft count, bookmarked count,
mentions count, total views on their pages, and views on their pages this
month — plus widgets for their drafts, bookmarked pages, recently viewed, and
recently updated pages across the organization. - Admins additionally see the organization-wide total, published, draft,
archived, and stale counts, plus org-wide engagement (views this month), a
most-viewed list, top contributors, recent activity feed, and a
needs-attention widget listing business-wide drafts pending publish.
Managing stale content
Published pages not updated or confirmed still accurate within the configured
Stale Wiki Threshold (default 120 days) show a May be outdated badge to
everyone who can open them. Business admins also get the dashboard’s Stale KPI,
which links to a filtered list of all stale pages. Editing and saving a stale
page, or its owner answering Still accurate when its review is due, clears
the flag. The weekly review reminder (to the page’s owner, else its owning team,
else the person who manages it) is part of Content Governance in the admin area,
not this setting.
Transferring management
The page’s manager or an admin can transfer management via the page’s Wiki
Tools menu (Transfer management).
The new manager must be an active member of the organization. The transfer is
recorded in version history. If the transferring user can no longer view the
page after the transfer (for example, a private or group-restricted page),
they are redirected to the browse view rather than seeing an access-denied
error.
The page’s owner
Properties › Owner names who answers for keeping a page’s content right —
a person, a team, or both — separately from who manages it. Until one is
named, the page’s manager answers for it. Owners find their pages, with the
date each is due for review, under Content I own in the account menu.
Exporting to PDF
When the app-level Allow PDF Export setting is on (default) and the page’s
own Allow PDF Export toggle is on (default), any viewer can download the
page as a PDF from the page’s Wiki Tools menu (Export PDF).
Duplicating a page
When a page’s Allow Duplication toggle is on (default), its manager or an
admin can duplicate it. The copy is created as a draft beside the original
(same parent). The copy is a snapshot — subsequent edits to either page are
independent.
5. Settings
| Setting | Where | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enable Wikis AI Agent | Wikis → Settings | On | Lets Ask AI answer questions from wiki content and act on wikis |
| Enable AI Writing Assist | Wikis → Settings | On | The “Improve with AI” menu inside the wiki editor |
| Enable AI Cover Image Generation | Wikis → Settings | On | Generating a page’s cover image from a text prompt |
| Who can create a wiki page? | Wikis → Settings | Everyone | Who sees New Wiki and may create pages, on the web and through Ask AI |
| Include Wikis in Global Search | Wikis → Settings | On | Whether published wiki pages appear in platform-wide search results |
| Edit Lock Timeout (minutes) | Wikis → Settings | 30 | How long a page stays locked after its editor’s browser stops answering. While the editor is open the lock keeps renewing |
| Allow PDF Export | Wikis → Settings | On | Master toggle for PDF export across all wiki pages |
| Stale Wiki Threshold | Wikis → Settings | 120 days | How long a published page can go without an update or a “Still accurate” before it shows a May be outdated badge. Choices: 90, 120, 365, or 730 days |
| Notify on New Comments | Wikis → Settings | On | Whether the page’s manager (and the author of a comment being replied to) receives a notification when someone comments |
| Notify Users on @Mention | Wikis → Settings | On | Whether a user receives a notification when @mentioned in a wiki comment |
| Notify on Wiki Publish | Wikis → Settings | Off | Whether users are notified when a wiki is published. Recipients are determined by the configured recipient group, falling back to app admins then business admins |
6. More help
- Wikis FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Wikis from these articles.