A SharePoint wiki today is a SharePoint site whose pages are organized as a knowledge base. The old "wiki page library" still exists in classic SharePoint, but Microsoft's modern approach is a team or communication site, its Site Pages, page templates and navigation.
You can build a good wiki this way, but it takes planning: SharePoint gives you a website builder, not a ready-made wiki. Below we explain what a wiki page in SharePoint is, how to create one step by step, and five real examples. If your team works in Microsoft Teams, we also show where SharePoint falls short there, and how to keep SharePoint as your document store while giving people a wiki they can use without leaving Teams.
What is a wiki page in SharePoint?
A wiki page in SharePoint is a web page your team can edit together and link to other pages. It's stored in a page library on a SharePoint site, and it comes in two kinds. Classic wiki pages live in a wiki page library, an older feature Microsoft no longer develops. Modern pages live in the Site Pages library, work on mobile, and are where Microsoft is investing. Only the modern kind is worth starting with in 2026.
So when people search for a "modern SharePoint wiki," what they're really building is a site of modern pages, organized with navigation, page templates and metadata. That's the approach the rest of this guide follows.
How to create a SharePoint wiki, step by step
Set aside an afternoon for the setup, plus time to write the first pages. You'll need permission to create sites or own an existing one.
- Pick the site. Use a communication site for a company-wide wiki that a few people edit and many read, or your team's existing team site (every Microsoft Teams team has one) for a team wiki.
- Plan the structure first. List 5–8 top-level topics (for example: Onboarding, Policies, How-tos, Tools, FAQ). These become your navigation; without them, pages pile up on the Site Pages list in no useful order.
- Build the navigation. Edit the site's navigation and add one link or heading per topic. Communication sites also support a mega menu for larger wikis.
- Create a page template. Select New → Page, lay out the sections every article should have, then Save as template. Future pages start from it, so every article looks the same.
- Add metadata. In the Site Pages library, add columns such as Topic, Owner and Last reviewed. You can then filter and sort pages, and show related pages with the Highlighted content web part.
- Write and link pages. Create each article from your template, link related pages, and add it to the navigation.
- Set permissions. Decide who can edit (site members) and who can only read (visitors). Keep editors to a small group so content stays accurate.
- Add it to Teams. In the right channel, add a SharePoint tab or a Website tab pointing to the wiki's home page so people can open it without leaving Teams.
SharePoint wiki examples
These five setups cover most of what teams build. Each lists the site type, the top-level navigation and the pages that usually come first.
| Example | Site type | Navigation | First pages to write |
|---|---|---|---|
| HR and employee handbook | Communication site | Policies · Benefits · Time off · Onboarding · Contacts | Leave policy, expense policy, benefits overview, who to ask |
| IT help desk knowledge base | Communication site | Accounts · Devices · Software · Security · Request help | Reset your password, set up MFA, VPN on a new laptop, report phishing |
| New-hire onboarding hub | Communication site | First day · First week · Tools · Teams and people · FAQ | Day-one checklist, tools and logins, org chart, glossary |
| SOP library for operations | Team site | By department, then by process | One page per procedure: purpose, steps, owner, last reviewed |
| Project or team wiki | Team site (the one behind your Teams team) | Overview · Decisions · How we work · Docs | Project brief, decision log, meeting cadence, links to key files |
Two patterns run through every good example: a short, fixed navigation that people can learn in a minute, and an owner plus a "last reviewed" date on every page so readers know what to trust.
SharePoint as a wiki in Microsoft Teams: what to know first
SharePoint works as a wiki, but it's a website builder first, and most of the work happens outside Teams. We set up SharePoint wikis for our own support team before switching, and these were the sticking points:
- A blank canvas. Every site, page layout and navigation menu has to be designed by someone. Busy team leads want to write content, not build a website.
- Limited in Teams. As a Teams tab you can read pages and edit existing ones, but creating pages, managing permissions and site settings send you to SharePoint in the browser.
- Structure takes discipline. Pages land in one Site Pages list; grouping them by topic depends on navigation and metadata you maintain by hand.
- Search finds files better than answers. Results mix pages, documents and lists, and older files are hard to surface.
- Permissions are powerful but complex. Access is inherited from Microsoft 365 groups and sites, which is hard for non-admins to check or change.
- Templates are layouts. Built-in templates set where things go on the page, not what an SOP or FAQ should contain.
A user on YouTube commented: "Works bad as a wiki, just a collection of pages or a website with links."
To be fair to SharePoint: it's included in most Microsoft 365 plans, it handles documents, versioning and compliance well, and its layouts are flexible. For many companies the right answer isn't SharePoint or a wiki, but both.
Keep SharePoint, add a wiki people use: Perfect Wiki
Perfect Wiki gives you a ready-made wiki inside Microsoft Teams while SharePoint stays your document store. That's how our support team solved it: documents stayed in SharePoint, and the knowledge people look up every day moved into a structured wiki.
| What you need | SharePoint site | Perfect Wiki |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Design the site, navigation and templates yourself | Install in Teams and start writing |
| Work inside Teams | Read and edit existing pages; most management in the browser | Create, edit, organize, search and manage permissions in Teams |
| Structure | Navigation and metadata you maintain | Pages and subpages you drag into place, table of contents, @mentions between pages |
| Search and answers | Full-text search across the site | Typo-tolerant search across all knowledge bases, plus an AI Knowledge Bot that answers with links to sources |
| Templates | Layout templates | Content templates for FAQs, SOPs, onboarding and more |
| Import | Files stay files | Word, PDF, Markdown and more convert to editable pages |
| SharePoint | Native | Import SharePoint files, or sync a folder so the AI bot can answer from it |
And you don't have to choose who sees what where:
- Sync SharePoint folders. Connect a folder and the AI Knowledge Bot answers questions from those documents, with no copying.
- Embed the wiki in SharePoint. Put Perfect Wiki pages on a SharePoint page for colleagues who live there, following the embed guide.
- Or embed only the chatbot. Add the AI bot to a SharePoint page so people can ask questions and get answers from your wiki. The native SharePoint Copilot integration hasn't proved efficient, so many companies look for an alternative to make their knowledge work.
Perfect Wiki has a 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at USD 9 per editor/month on a long-term contract; see pricing for current plans.
Build your wiki in SharePoint if you have the time and an admin to design and maintain the site. With Perfect Wiki, you can create a wiki your team can use in Teams today. Many teams do both: SharePoint for documents and records, Perfect Wiki for the knowledge people look up every day, synced with SharePoint and embedded back into it. Or you can replace a SharePoint site and its clunky permissions and settings with an efficient, AI-powered wiki.
Start your 14-day free trial or book a 30-minute demo and we'll connect your SharePoint folders with you.
Comparing more options? See the best wiki apps for Microsoft Teams.
