Perfect Wiki vs DokuWiki: Comparing Usability and Features

DokuWiki is known for its simplicity and compatibility with an array of useful plugins. But is MS Teams one of them? And is it really intuitive for users with minimal IT skills? In this article, we discuss whether DokuWiki is an accessible solution for MS Teams users.

This post is brought to you by Perfect Wiki, a tool that helps you create a database of your company resources right in Microsoft Teams. Try us out for FREE today, no sign-in or credit card required.

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If you don’t have the time to read the whole post, see the summary table for a side-by-side comparison of Perfect Wiki and OneNote.

Table. Perfect Wiki vs DokuWiki: Comparing Features

Overview

DokuWiki

User forums cite DokuWiki as a simpler version of MediaWiki that’s a better solution for smaller teams. It is also a free open-source knowledge base solution that is hosted usually in public servers and uses plain text for content creation.

It’s also scalable from small to medium companies, and has a convenient “trace” function that lets you track your searches throughout the day.

Perfect Wiki

Perfect Wiki is a feature-rich yet instantly usable knowledge base for Microsoft Teams. It combines the key components of a wiki such as page linking and permissions control without the complexity of many web-based knowledge sharing platforms.

How easy is it to set up?

DokuWiki

As a user with minimal (a.k.a none) IT skills, I found the set-up process very frustrating. There is no straightforward explanation on DokuWiki’s website of how to run the wiki for the first time. When I created an account, as one does for any web-based resource, I was taken to the user forum with no onboarding or explanations on how to create a page or setup my own wiki.

What’s more, the user support pages use a lot of “wiki” jargon that could be off-putting to a non-programmer, especially if this is your first knowledge base.

The set-up process should be obvious right from the landing page, and since this was not the case, I had to use the demo version of DokuWiki to test it out.

In theory, you should be able to host DokuWiki on your own server or get a pre bundled version from a third-party hosting service, which is fine if you want more flexibility in configuration. However, for users like me that just want to input text/tables/images and immediately know what my page will look like, DokuWiki will be unintuitive and frustrating at times.

Perfect Wiki

If you need an internal knowledge base that takes care of all the set-up for you, try Perfect Wiki. It’s ready to go in seconds right inside Microsoft Teams as soon as you add it, absolutely no set-up or sign-in required. Your whole team will have access to Perfect Wiki from the start using their MS Teams credentials.

Does it integrate with Microsoft Teams?

DokuWiki

No, there are no ready-to-use integration options for Microsoft Teams, so you will need to host all your company knowledge separately from where you do all your communication.

Perfect Wiki

Microsoft Integration is the foundation of Perfect Wiki. We built a simple but powerful knowledge base that supersedes the built-in wiki by a long shot while being fully accessible right inside your team channels.

Try our seamless integration with MS Teams now, no credit card required.

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How easy is it to add and manage members?

DokuWiki

You will need to manually invite users to your DokuWiki workspace. Obviously this is quite an energy-consuming process if you have a large team. There is the option of importing a list of members, but you will need to make edits to the list before users are invited, so it’s still effortful.

And of course, users will have separate logins for Microsoft Teams and DokuWiki.

Perfect Wiki

We inherit your member list from MS Teams, so all the members of a channel will have access to Perfect Wiki as soon as it’s installed. You can assign editing or read-only roles to each team member individually. Those with read-only access will not be able to change content in any way. You can also assign admin and members, the former being able to edit permissions and assign new admin.

Access the permissions menu right from the Users tab in Settings.

How easy is it to create and share pages?

DokuWiki

To create pages, you need to either search for nonexistent pages or link to nonexistent pages and then make a new one from there. This is the standard procedure for most open-source wikis, but this is unclear when you first set up DokuWiki. A feature as basic as creating a new page and adding content should be the first thing you learn how to do in a knowledgebase.

As far as sharing goes, you can share links to pages with external users as long as you haven’t locked that page from public viewing. You can also export a page or a namespace as an HTML or plain text document. Any other options such as PDF export require you to install the appropriate plugin (yes, you need plugins for practically everything).

Perfect Wiki

Creating a new page is very simple - just hit the “+” sign on your left toolbar and a new page will appear. You can also import files from your device or get your existing content from the MS Teams built-in wiki in a few clicks.

Our multiple sharing options allow you to export pages in HTML or PDF, as well as share direct links to pages with internal or external users.

What about formatting and organizing pages?

DokuWiki

All pages in DokuWiki are written in Markdown syntax, meaning you will need to know how to use Markdown’s commands before you even begin adding your content to a page. Even though this syntax can be learned

If you want to add information to a page the same way you would in a Word document with familiar formatting options (a.k.a. WYSIWYG), you will need to install a plugin for that.

Page organiation in DokuWiki happens through what are called namespaces - databases of pages based on topic or keyword (like topics and subtopics in an article). However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to automate namespace creation or view all your namespaces at once, which makes browsing your knowledge base a time-consuming process.

Perfect Wiki

Perfect Wiki supports both Markdown syntax and Word-like input, so you can use familiar Markdown commands and insert images and tables in one click all at the same time. No plugins needed.

And you can reorganize your pages with incredible ease by dragging and dropping them to create subpages, and you will be able to view all your pages in all your MS Teams channels at once on the left side of your workspace.

Can you lock the wiki content from being edited?

DokuWiki

Locking pages is actually one of the more intuitive features of DokuWiki. All pages are open to editing by default.

It seems that you can create different levels of access based on user groups. You can assign admin with the highest level of access all the way down to view-only accounts. You can also restrict all external users from viewing your content (a.k.a. making your wiki private) in the Access Control center.

Perfect Wiki

Pages in your workspace are also open to edits by default, but you can change that in seconds in the “Account and Settings” menu. Simply toggle the “Everyone can edit” button and select the users that should have the right to make changes to your content.

And to protect content from accidental changes, all pages are in view-only mode until you hit “Start editing.”

How secure is your content?

DokuWiki

As far as security goes, keep in mind that DokuWiki is an open-source web-based platform, so it will never be as secure as a desktop application. And since you will be the one hosting DokuWiki on your own server, you will be solely responsible for the security of your valuable data.

PerfectWiki

In contrast to DokuWiki, we took care of all possible security considerations for you. All user content is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2+ with perfect forward secrecy and full GDPR compliance. Our servers are located in the US and EU (Ireland and Germany) and use full disk, industry-standard AES 256 encryption.

Customers who wish to have their data processed within the EU will have the option to specify it as their data region of choice.

Summary: pros and cons

Pros:

• Pages can be translated to over 20 languages
• Namespaces help easily navigate content and jump from one page to another
• It’s open-source and free

Cons:

• Still a steep learning curve for first-time wiki users
• Complicated set-up and configuring with plugins for even basic functions
• You need your own server and a software tech to set up and use it
• No onboarding and contradicting information in the help documents
• Does not integrate with MS Teams

Conclusion

So it seems that even though DokuWiki’s tagline is “It’s better when it’s simple,” it may only be a simple solution to someone with a solid background in software engineering. Unfortunately for teams that just want a one-stop-shop ready-to-use knowledge base, DokuWiki is probably not a usable option.

Perfect Wiki bundled all the key features of a knowledge base and have them all ready for you to use in one click, right inside Microsoft Teams. You won’t need to configure a single feature - start creating or importing your content together with your team members as soon as you open the app.

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