System Documentation In Sharepoint

Question

I need to create a repository of system documentation in Sharepoint. The intended audience need quick and easy access to the documentation (= searchable), and must also be able to navigate easily between different parts (= hyperlinks). It also needs to be fairly easy to manage for the content editors, but this is of less importance.

The documentation will consist of:

• Rich text (large bodies of texts)
• Tables (property lists)
• Graphics (photographs and drawings)

Using the Sharepoint wiki functionality seems promising, but I have heard that there are issues with e.g. managing images. However, I think that it will be manageable.

Based on my lacking experience, I would create the following:

• One wiki library for end-users. This would contain all of the rich text, tables, and references to images.
• One asset library for content editors. This would contain all of the images, master documents (such as Visio files) and other documents not suitable for converting to wiki pages.

Is this a sane setup? Or am I Doing It Wrong? :-)

Answer 1

That sounds about right to me. The wiki approach will allow you to hot link to other pages easily, [[page|optional description text]]. We've got several sites with project documentation, policies, and procedures using the wiki and a document library to do the exact same thing (in 2007). It works well and is easy to use.

Also with the wiki approach, don't forget you can create additional columns in the wiki library to help users search and classify documentation.

Answer 2

Wiki is the way to go, however you are correct that embedding images is difficult, my experience has been that people expect cut and paste functionality "just like in Word"