UnderestimatedTwiki

TWiki must be one of the most underestimated tools out there. We use it quite extensively at Yahoo!.

What is TWiki? Officially, it is a “Enterprise Collaboration Platform” (yawn). What that means is that it is a wiki software that is meant to be used for intranet information.

I’ve used it minimally so far mainly because it looks ugly, but I see that the official latest version has improved by leaps and bounds. I have started to use it quite extensively.

Some of the things I like:

Reasonably clean formatting rules – This factor can never be emphasized enough. TWiki’s rules are heck of a lot better than other wiki syntaxes I’ve come across (including MediaWiki’s).

Help section is to the point.

The list of plugins just makes me go wow.

Good configurability and things like doc graphics and  TwikiVariables

Discussions are integrated into the pages like the page on StructuredWiki (our older version still doesn’t :| )

Plugins, again – syntax highlighting, tracking actions embedded in meeting notes, bugzilla integration, and even headlines from RSS feeds and embedding PDFs

There’s a presentation that gives a good introduction to TWiki.

Aside: I wonder what tools other companies/organizations use.