Implementing a Knowledge Management Solution?

dirtkilla asks: "I work for a large health care software vendor in our remote hosting area. Recently we've been asked to look into a Knowledge Management/Doc Repository type solution to implement. I have researched and installed a few options: C-arbre and TikiWiki. C-Arbre is lacking in documentation and Tiki seems pretty bloated. I'm facing people pushing to implement Microsoft Share Point, I'd much rather go towards an open non-Microsoft solution." How would you organize a variety of information, both digital and non-digital, into an easy to maintain system that just about anyone can use?

"We currently log all our technical info/instructions etc in Microsoft Word docs, emails and scribbles on paper. Share Point seems to be a logical solution for our collection of Microsoft Word documents, however I'm not much for loading Word to view something that could be displayed or edited in a browser.

I really like the Wiki idea, and found a VB script to convert Word to Wiki. However large documents may be a pain to do this with, and some people may not be comfortable with such a change. I can upload documents to the site and tie them to a particular page/File Gallery but I'm not sure about search functions searching the text of the document. I'd also like a way to export info, possibly to RTF/XML/HTML or some format that Word can read/edit/save and then import to the Knowledge Share.

I was hoping someone would have some advice/ideas/experience with getting this setup. Ultimately we'd like Searching, Grouping, LDAP authentication, Calendar functionality (we use Outlook so who knows), document storage, and Wiki functionality. It is the hope that something useful and user friendly which non-technical people would be comfortable using."

Comments

Re:Hire someone to customize for your needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

a move to Open Office (or star office) would be easier to push in your organization if you didn't rely upon MS-Office specific systems in cases such as this. That is a lot of money your company could save down the line that you'd completely write-off with sharepoint - it just wouldn't be an option.

We're taking support though. OpenOffice could cease to exist tomorrow or could be discontinued like Red Hat did with their free Linux version. You'll be plain shit out of luck if that happens. I'd recommend sticking with the tried-and-true Microsoft Office components and giving Sharepoint a try in this environment.

There are people out there who would steer you in the direction of so-called LAMPS, or Linux-Apache-MySQL-Perl/PHP, solutions, but in the end you're basically left with some guy's weekend pet project. Do you want to entrust your data to something some guy writes in between playing Halo, drinking beer, and browsing pornography? I don't think so! You will not get fired for choosing the Microsoft solution so I recommend it as the best option. They have decades of experience producing quality enterprise-class software for companies just like yours.

Re:Hire someone to customize for your needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. We're taking support though. OpenOffice could cease to exist tomorrow or could be discontinued like Red Hat did with their free Linux version. You'll be plain shit out of luck if that happens. I'd recommend sticking with the tried-and-true Microsoft Office components and giving Sharepoint a try in this environment.

You're so funny! lolololololololol!