Chapter 4. How To Use Wiki?

This section provides you a guide to use all Wiki features and configure the Wiki application to make it work in your desired way. Before going further, you should know some basic concepts about Wiki. After accessing the Wiki application, the Wiki homepage will appear as below:

Details:

Item Description
The Breadcrumb which shows the page hierarchy.
The Wiki administration area which allows administrators only to configure the space settings.
The Search box.
The pages tree view.
The Page Control area which helps users take actions with the current page.
The page content.
The page information. Click View Change to see changes in the latest versions. Click Attachment(s) and Revisions links to open the Attachments details pane and the Revisions pane respectively. These two panes can be collapsed by clicking the relevant links again.

Wiki content is organized as a page tree in which each page may contain many sub-pages. The hierarchy is reflected on UI by the Breadcrumb and the page tree in the left pane. When a page is added, it is always defined as a sub-page to the current one. You can have wikis for portals, wikis for groups or users.

Space is a set of pages, so the space partitioning means they are independent trees. This separation enables Wiki to provide knowledge spaces for different groups.

There are 3 space types:

Note

In this document, Spaces are referred as wikis, particularly portal wikis, group wikis and user wikis.

Any space which has an implicit root page is named Wiki Home.

Pages are places where information in Wiki is stored and shared. Pages are stored within a space. Actions that a user can perform on a specific wiki page depends on permissions assigned by the administrator. See the Page Permissions for detailed permissions.

In a page, you can:

There are two ways to create a page:

The first way

In this way, you need to use the toolbar.

1. Go to a Wiki space in which you want to create a page.

2. Click Add Page, then select Blank Page or From Template... to add a page with a template.

If you select From Template..., a list of available templates will appear.

You can:

i. Click Preview corresponding to the template you want to see. The template preview appears.

ii. Click Select corresponding to the template you want to select for your new page. The selected template appears.

3. Enter the title for your page. The page title must be unique.

4. Enter the content of your page by using Wiki Markup or the WYSIWYG editor.

5. Click Preview if you want to see how your page looks like.

6. Click Save to finish.

The second way

In this way, you need to use the undefined link in a page.

In the Wiki application of eXo Platform, you can add a link pointing to a page which you are going to create later. Such links are called undefined links. These links are often used to remind other Wiki users to create the page.

Add an undefined link for creating a page later

1. Add a link by typing the page title between square brackets '[.... ]' into your page body.

For example:

What you type What you get
[eXo User Guide]

2. Click Save to save the page containing the link. The undefined link is underlined.

3. Click this link to open the Add Page form.

4. Follow the steps stated above to enter the page title, content and save the page.

You can edit a page at any time if you have the Edit permission on that page.

Edit the whole page content

To edit the whole page content, click Edit in the Page Control area. Your page will be switched to the Edit mode.

Now, you can rename the page and edit the page content. In the View mode, hover your cursor over the page title and double-click to edit it. The toolbar in the Edit mode will be changed to activate the following actions.

Details:

Item Description
 Switch to the Rich Text (WYSIWYG) editor.
Display the preview mode of the currently edited content. Previewing a page helps you verify the result of rendering the markup you just entered without saving.
Open the Wiki syntax help pane.
Show more syntax help.
Input the edit reason if necessary.
Save the current page and go back to the view mode. Changes will be sent to watchers via mail notification.
Save the current page without sending notification to the watcher.
Discard the current changes and go back to the View mode.

Edit a page section

To edit only a section in the whole page content, hover your cursor over the title of the section you want to edit, then click .

The selected section will be switched to the Edit mode.

Tip

In the View mode, you can quickly edit the page title by double-clicking it, then press Enter when finishing.

1. Select a page that you want to move.

2. Click More in the Page Control area, then select Move Page from the drop-down menu.

The form to select the destination page appears.

3. Select the destination page.

4. Click Move.

Note

The Move page action is not displayed when you are at the Wiki Home. You can only move pages inside a wiki space and not between spaces.

1. Open the page you want to delete, then select More in the Page Control area.

2. Click Delete Page from the drop-down menu.

3. Click OK in the confirmation message to accept your deletion.

Note

The Delete page action is not displayed when you are in the Wiki Home.

Viewing page information is accessible to users who have the View permission on that page. The page information provides details about related pages of the current page, the hierarchy structure of the current page, the page history, and more.

1. Select the page you want to view the information.

2. Click More from the page toolbar, then select Page Info from the drop-down menu.

All information of the opening page, including page summary, related pages, page hierarchy, recent changes will be displayed.

Here, you can do the following actions:

This feature allows you to add pages related to your page. This function can be done in the Page Info view and is activated to users with the Edit permission.

1. Click Add More Relations in the Page Info view, then select the related pages in the Select a page window.

2. Click Select to add the selected page to the list of the Related Pages.

The related pages of the opening page are displayed in the side pane as below.

To access the page history, just click View Page History in the Page Info view.

The History Page appears.

Details:

Item Function
Compare selected page versions.
Allow you to select two versions that you want to compare.
Allow you to specify the version labels of the page and link to view a specific version.
The date and time when the page is changed.
The authors who make changes of the page.
The reasons why the changes are made (optional).
 Restore a page to the selected version.

Watching a page allows you to receive a notification message about any changes in the page.

Watch a page

1. Open the page you want to watch.

2. Click More in the Page Control area, then select Watch from the drop-down menu.

Stop watching a page

1. Open the page which you are watching.

2. Click More in the Page Control area, then select Stop Watching from the drop-down menu.

Attachments are any files enclosed with your pages. The attachments may be images, documents, presentation or multimedia files.

In this section, you will know how to:

1. Open the page you want to view attachments.

2. Click the Attachment(s) link in the Page info area.

The Attachment pane of that page will appear:

Delete an attachment

Simply click corresponding to the attachment.

Download an attachment

Simply click the attachment name.

There are two ways to add an attachment to a page:

The first way

In this way, you need to open the Attachment pane of the page.

1. Click the Upload New File in the attachment list pane. The upload window will appear.

2. Select a file from your local device, then click Open. The file will be uploaded automatically then.

The second way

You can use this method when editing the page content by WYSIWYG editor (Rich Text editor).

1. Select a page to which you want to add an attachment.

2. Select Edit at the Page Control area. For more details, see the Edit a page section.

3. Select the Rich Text editor on the page toolbar.

4. Click on the toolbar of the Rich Text editor, then select Attached File... from the drop-down menu.

The Link form is displayed as below.

5. Select a file to upload. Now you can upload a new file or select one file from existing files.

  • Upload a new file:

i. Double-click Upload new file, or click Upload new file --> Select in the Current page or All pages tab.

ii. Click Browse to select a file from your local device, then select Upload.

  • Select from existing files: Click the file, then select Select.

The form to edit the link parameters appears.

6. Provide the link label and tooltip.

7. Click Create Link to update the link.

1. Click on the text editor, then select Insert Image...

2. Select an inserted image of the current page, or click the All Pages tab to select an image attached to another page in the space.

3. Click the Insert Image... button.

WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. The WYSIWYG editor allows you to edit an wiki page directly in the wiki markup language. This has the advantage of being faster than the Rich Text Editor for some formatting tasks.

You can switch between the Source and WYSIWYG editors at any time by clicking or . In the Source editor, which is selected by default when you edit a page, you have to use the wiki markup language for text formatting, while the WYSIWYG editor enables the content to be appeared during editing that is very similar to the published result. Thanks to available tools on this editor, you can format your content visually without using wiki markups.

Note

If the final result is not similar to what you wish when editing a page by the WYSIWYG editor, you can go back to the Source editor and use Wiki markups to edit the content.

When using the WYSIWYG editor, examples of commonly used markup are displayed in a lateral panel with a link to the Full Syntax Notation page for more details.

To learn more about the WYSIWYG editor, you can refer to the WYSIWYG editor user guide.

If you do not know how to use a syntax, you can use the Syntax Help function. The Syntax Help is displayed by clicking from the page toolbar. When being clicked, a lateral pane beside the editing area will show all the Confluence syntax information. The lateral pane can be hidden by clicking in the upper right corner or by clicking again.

You can click at the bottom of the short Help Tips form to open the Full Syntax Notation page.

You can insert icons, emoticons to emphasize the content. The usage is described in the Full Syntax Notation page with example so you can easily remember and use them.

Example of emoticons and icons

By using macros, you can apply extra formatting, functionality and customization to your content. You can easily add macro tags by using the Rich Text editor.

1. Switch to Rich Text editor.

2. Click Macros, then select Insert Macros... from the drop-down menu.

The Insert Macros form appears.

The macro is classified into different categories: Content, Formatting, Navigation.

3. Select a macro category.

4. Select your desired macro from the selected categories list, then click the Select button, or simply double-click it. For example, if you select the Box macro, you will go to the macro parameters form.

5. Enter parameters into the corresponding fields for your selected macro. Click Insert Macro to perform your macro insertion, or click Previous to return to the initial Insert Macro form.

The following table describes specific functions of common macros.

MacroFunction
Excerpt Create additional information for the current page and it can be set to "hidden" in the current page, but displayed to add more information as the summary about the page when it is used with the Page Tree macro.
Include Page Include the content of another page in the current page.
Box Draw a box around the provided content.
Color Change the text color.
Code Highlight code snippets of various programming languages.
Error Message Display an error message note.
Float Allow content to 'float' on the left or the right.
Info Message Display an info message.
No Format Keep the content displayed like you type.
Note Message Display a note message.
Panel Embrace a block of text within a fully customizable panel.

Table

Table cell

Table row

Inset a table.

Insert a table cell.

Insert a table row.

Tip Message

Display a tip message block.

Warning Message

Display a warning message block.

Anchor Create an anchor in a page.
Children Display the children and descendants of a specific page in the current page.
Page Tree Display the hierarchy of a page in the current page.
Related Pages Render the related pages of the current page.
Table of Content Generate a table of content for the current page.
Section & Column Write the content in columns.

When editing the content of a page, Wiki will automatically create a version of that page after it is saved. Thanks to the page versions, you can make changes on the page safely and roll back to an earlier version without worrying about messing things up.

In the Page History view, you can see all versions of a page.

Each version includes the following information:

  • Revision numbers.

  • Author making changes.

  • Date and time when changes are made.

  • Summary (if any).

In the Page History page, you can:

Note

All functions, including viewing, comparing and restoring, can also be done by clicking the Revisions link at the Page Info bar. One pop-up pane appears right under this bar, allowing you to do the same steps as described below.

To view a specific version of a page, just click a version label in the Page History page. The selected version of that page will be displayed.

At a version of the page, you can do the following actions:

Item Description
Compare the current version with the selected one.
Replace the current version with the selected version.
Go to the Page History page.
Prev View content of the previous version.
Next View content of the next version.

Wiki keeps track of histories of changes on a page by maintaining a version of the page each time it is modified. To compare two versions, select two checkboxes corresponding to each relevant version, then click .

A page which shows the changes between these two versions will be displayed.

The changes between two versions will be marked with colors:

Note

Only two revisions can be selected at one time.

When you notice that there are changes in the current page version that you are not satisfied, you can rollback to an older version of that page quickly.

To restore an older version, click corresponding to your desired version in the Page History page.

Note

Restoring an older version will create a copy of that version. For example, if the [current version (v.2)] is restored to the [older version (v.1)], Wiki will create a new version (v.3) containing content of v.1. The version v.3 will become the current version.

Wiki provides permanent bookmarkable URLs to all wiki pages. Wiki will resolve wiki pages by inspecting the URL used to call it. URLs are in the following form:

http://hostname/$CONTAINER/$SITE/$NAV_URI/[$OWNER_TYPE/$OWNER]/$WIKI_PAGE_URI

Item Description
$CONTAINER$ The portal container.
$SITE The portal site (e.g,'classic').
$NAV_URI The URI of navigation bound to a page containing the Wiki portlet.
$OWNER_TYPE May be 'group' or 'user'.
$OWNER The wiki owner which can be name of user or of group.
$WIKI_PAGE_URI The URI inferred automatically from the wiki page name.

Any wiki page should be accessed by a friendly URL. For example:

In Wiki, you can search spaces, or pages in a space and attached files. There are two types of search in Wiki:

1. Enter a key word in the search box.

2. Select your desired page from the drop-down menu. You will be redirected to the selected page.

Note

If you are in the portal wiki, your quick search will be performed on all wiki spaces, otherwise it will only be performed on the current wiki.

The Advanced Search function allows you to search with a key word in a specific space. This mode helps you limit the search results.

1. Enter a key term into the search box, then hit the Enter key.

The search results are displayed like the illustration below.

If no results matched with the key words, the search screen informs "there is no search result...!"

2. Click to select a space from the drop-down menu to define a scale where to search for the entered word.

3. Click Search.

The WebDAV enables you to use the third party tools to communicate with hierarchical content servers via HTTP. It is possible to add and remove documents or a set of documents from a path on the server.

To access any workspaces of your repository, you can use the following URL format:

dav://host:port/rest/jcrwiki/{RepositoryName}/{WorkspaceName}/{Path}

For example, to access the Wiki Home of the "exo vietnam" space, enter the following URL in the address bar of your OS's explorer (Nautilus is used in this example):

You will be asked to enter your username and password.

After login succesfully, you will see all content in that Wiki space.

1. Go to the folder that contains the content you want to edit.

2. Use your text editor to edit the "Content" file in this folder. You can use the wiki syntax to format content as normal.

3. Save the file.

Note

Note

This section is for administrators only.

The administrator has the highest right in Wiki. The administrator can delete a page, change the space settings, set the Edit permission for users and more.

For each space, you can manage page templates.

Access the Space Settings page

1. Open a Wiki space.

2. Click Browse, then select Space Settings.

The Space Settings page appear.

Now, you can:

Wiki gives you the choice to make a space or an individual page to be open or restricted to specific users, groups or memberships. There are two levels of permissions in Wiki: Space Permissions and Page Permissions.

Each space may have its own permissions. Space permissions determine which actions a user can do within the space. A permission can be assigned to any users, groups or memberships.

To change the space permission, open a space, then click Browse and select Space Settings from the drop-down list. Click Permission in the Space Settings page that appears.

There are some permissions on a space as follows:

Permission Description
View Pages Specify who can view and watch pages of this space, its attachments and history.
Edit Pages Specify who can edit pages of this space.
Admin Pages Specify who have the administration rights on pages of this space.
Admin Space Specify who can administrate the space permissions and settings

In the Space Permissions form, you can add or remove the space permissions of the users, groups and memberships.

In the Space Permissions form, you can add permissions for individual users, groups of users or memberships.

1. Click to assign permissions to a user, a group or a membership respectively.

The form to select the user, the group and the membership appears.

2. Select a user, a group or a membership, then click Add.

3. Click to add the selectors to the Owner column in the Space Permissions form.

4. Tick the checkboxes corresponding to each permission you want to assign to the selectors.

5. Click Save to commit.

Note

View, Edit, Admin Pages permissions are applied by default to any pages of the space unless specific page permissions are set. The super user has all permissions implicitly.

To delete the permissions of a user, group or a membership in a space, just click corresponding to a user or group or membership in the Space Permissions form.

The Page Permissions allows you to set the View and Edit permissions for a specific page of a space.

1. Open a page of the space that you want to set the permissions.

2. Click More and select Page Permissions from the drop-down menu.

The Page Permissions form appears.

Pages are viewable/editable according to the space permission. On each page, a user with the Admin Pages permission will be able to override the view and edit permissions on this specific page.

A Page Permissions action appears in the page action menu when the user has the Admin Pages permission.

You can add and delete the View Pages Permission or the Edit Pages Permissions for the page. Do the same as Add space permissions and Delete space permissions.

When adding a new page, you are not required to write the content from scratch. You can start by selecting a page template which is actually a Wiki page with predefined content.

In the Space Settings form, select the Template tab and the form to manage templates appears.

Details:

Item Description
Search for a template.
 Create a new template.
 Edit a template.
 Delete a template.

This feature allows you to find your desired template quickly from the existing list as follows:

1. Input a word included in the title of your desired template in the Search textbox.

2. Press the Enter key, or click the Search button next to the textbox to start your search.

All matching results which contain your entered search term are displayed right below the textbox.

Note

The Search function is only performed by the template titles and you must enter a complete word into the Search textbox. For example, to find the template whose title contains "daily report", you can input "report" rather than "repo", or "daily" rather "ly".

1. Click Add more... in the Spage Settings page and the sample template form appears.

2. Add the title for the template.

3. Write the description in the Description....

4. Write the content for the template.

5. Click Save Template at the Page Control area. A message will inform your successful template creation.

1. Click the Edit icon corresponding to the template you want to edit.

2. Change the title, the description or the content as you want.

3. Click Save Template at the Page Control area.

1. Click corresponding to the template you want to delete.

2. Click OK in the confirmation message to accept your deletion.

Copyright © 2009-2012. All rights reserved. eXo Platform SAS