SharePoint Wiki Versus SharePoint Blog for building a knowledge base library for our company

Question

I am new to SharePoint and after reading about the available features inside SharePoint 2013 I have decided to either:-

1. Build a Wiki Site using the Wiki Page Library

2. OR to use the Collaboration -> Blog site.

My general requirements for building a knowledge base library are:-

1. To enable our Internal employees to add documents, procedures, regulation, etc. For example the HR employee can publish the company procedures, rules & regulation, etc. On the other side technical people can add articles related to how to configure outlook, update an anti-virus, etc.

2. Certain contents should be approved by specific employees before publishing it . For example a junior HR employee might write down the dress code for the employees , but these rules will not be seen by all the employees unless it is approved by the HR manager.

3. Adding categories should be stricter to only certain users. For example only admin can add categories Or only department managers are able to do so.

4. Some contents can be directly published without approval, and the user can specify if this content should be approved or it should be published directly.

5. Full history of who create, updated contents should be available.

6. Search contents.

So based on the above I have the following question:-

1. Which will work best to achieve my requirements; to have a wiki site or to have a blog site OR there is a better approach to follow?.

2. From what I have read till now. I can define security rules such as; users have write privileges , and other users can have publish rights, etc to the whole site. But can I apply these security rules to each category separately. such as content that will be published within certain category should be approved by certain users. For example if a document is going to be published under HR category then it should be approved by the HR manager only not the financial manager .

3. Can I force who can write, approve content under each category. For example non-HR employees cannot write, approve content under the HR category, while they might be able to write approve content under other categories.

4. From what I know till now, that blogs can provide all the features within Wikis, but they also provide additional capabilities such as the ability to date each blog, comment on a blog, use MS word to publish contents. So what does wiki privies that cannot be achieved within Blogs.

5. Can SharePoint achieve the above 6 requirements using the standard setting. Or some requirements cannot be achieved without doing some development and modifications

Thanks in advance for any help and sorry for the quit long post.

BR

Answer 1

Which will work best to achieve my requirements; to have a wiki site or to have a blog site OR there is a better approach to follow?.

I would rather have an Enterprise Collaboration Site with Publishing Feature enabled for the requirements mentioned below. It just gives the little extra "room" for managing content. And then as and when required configure Wiki Pages library or Publishing Pages library.

From what I have read till now. I can define security rules such as; users have write privileges , and other users can have publish rights, etc to the whole site. But can I apply these security rules to each category separately. such as content that will be published within certain category should be approved by certain users. For example if a document is going to be published under HR category then it should be approved by the HR manager only not the financial manager .

You can do this through Managed Metadata Services, ECM features like (Drop-Off Library,send-to-connections, Document Routing Rules , Content Organizer). Additionally, security policies and permissions can be configured for exact security requirements.

Can I force who can write, approve content under each category. For example non-HR employees cannot write, approve content under the HR category, while they might be able to write approve content under other categories.

Term Store Management can be configured for this or you can separate document libraries for different departments with their respective approvers against each document workflow.

From what I know till now, that blogs can provide all the features within Wikis, but they provide the ability to date each blog, comment on a blog, use MS word to publish contents. So what does wiki privies that cannot be achieved within Blogs.

Historically, blogs were always associated with informal journals and Wikis for knowledge management. Over the recent years, blogs emerged as great way to share knowledge through matured publishing, tagging and content management features. Either of them would work fine, but I would rather go for a Wiki Site with Search Services configured and integrated with metadata columns to harness the most out of the Knowledge Library.

Can SharePoint achieve the above 6 requirements using the standard setting. Or some requirements cannot be achieved without doing some development and modifications

Yes, for most part of it they can be done without any development/customizations to the product.