Use Cases

Table of contents

• Introduction
• List of "Use Cases" for TikiWiki
  • Online community / association / club / special interest group / NGO (A)
  • Blog (one author) / Personal site / family site (A)
  • Simple portal / news site (A)
  • Advanced portal / news site (A)
  • Corporate web site (A)
  • Groupware Wiki / Corporate Wiki / Corporate Intranet / Team project (A)
  • Public Wiki (A)
  • Group knowledge base / Knowledge Management (KM) / institutional memory (A)
  • Product or software documentation and support (A)
  • Customer extranet (B)
  • Personal knowledge base / manage my life (B)
  • Wiki-based Project Management (PM) (B)
  • Glossary / Dictionary / Encyclopedia (B)
  • Writing a book (B)
  • Framework / Activity Workflow / Specialized web Application (B)
  • Document Workflow (B)
  • Bug or Issue tracker (B)
  • Collaborative research (B)
  • Voice-enabled wiki and mobile applications (B)
  • Geo CMS (B)
  • Database, forms & reports (B)
  • Blog (several authors) (C)
  • Event Management, Conference Management & planning (C)
  • Calendar of events (C)
  • Document Management System (DMS) (C)
  • SourceForge/Gforge type site (workspaces) (C)
  • Translation Management System (TMS) (B)
  • Traditional Project Management (PM) with Gantt charts, etc (D)
  • E-learning / Learning Management System (LMS) / classroom / course management system (CMS) (D)
  • Customer/Contact/Constituent relationship management (CRM) (D)
  • Bibliography (D)
  • E-democracy (D)
  • Social networking / Job board / Dating site / hospitality exchange / Car Pooling (D)
  • Collaborative Art and Video Portal (C)
  • E-commerce / Shopping cart (E)
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP) / Accounting (E)
• Related links
• Alias

Introduction

Tiki is a Wiki / Content Management System (CMS) / Groupware.

These are broad and vague terms.

• Wikis can be used for so many things. A public encyclopedia is very different than a corporate wiki.
• Groupware can be defined as "software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals". This is very vague.
• Content Management System (CMS) is especially a vague term: A "system to manage content". Just about anything can fit that definition! A computer and a filing a cabinet are a CMS

TikiWiki enthusiasts will tell you that Tiki is a jack-of-all-trades, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, all-in-one tool which lets you do just about "anything". It could power probably over 90% of the websites in the World (Let's face it, most sites are pretty simple!). But of course, you don't want to do "anything". You have a specific objective/community/project in mind. This page will define a bit more the different ways to use TikiWiki.

With TikiWiki, you can pick & choose which features are turned on. Chances are, your project will be a combination of a few 'Use Cases'. So you can use the combined features of all appropriate use cases.

Why cater to so many use cases? A bit like speaking many languages from the same root (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, etc.), once you know 3 or 4, the 5th and 6th are easier to learn because you already have many bases. Some words are the same, or similar enough that you can get by. So each Use Case is easier & easier.

Similar to the list of features, rating (A, B, C, D, E) are to compare TikiWiki as an overall solution for these use cases, compared to "industry standards" in the Open Source World. So "A" means that TikiWiki is, for this Use Case, just as good as any other Open Source project. "A" does not mean "Perfect" or that it has all the features. Some features may be weak but compensated by other strong features. The ratings are based on the latest stable version of Tiki. If you disagree with a rating, please change it and edit the Strengths/Weaknesses sections accordingly.

ToDo

1. These ratings needs to be split, like in features:
   • Setup/admin UI: How easy / intuitive is to setup this feature?
   • UI end user : Once setup, how easy / intuitive is it for the end-user? (was it worth it?)
   • Stability: How many bugs left?
   • Feature-set / power: How does this feature compare to other Open Source apps?
2. Move to a SWOT format

Please do add links to your TikiWiki-powered sites which fit a profile.

Each Use Case will eventually need an installation profile to make it easy for people to get going when they install TikiWiki.

Format:

!!!Use Case and Rating (A,B,C,D,E)
Description of Use case, which will eventually be a profile (who/what/etc)

-=Key features=-
Including links to the proper documentation page. This will make it easier to evaluate/understand.

-=Strengths=-
Why is Tiki good at this?

-=Weaknesses=-
Why is Tiki not so good?

-=Examples & related links=-
Some good examples of live sites (TikiWiki or otherwise)

List of "Use Cases" for TikiWiki

This is not a list of features. It's what you can do once you combine those features.

Online community / association / club / special interest group / NGO (A)

non profit or association of professionals

User trackers (user profiles) for membership management, Wiki user pages, Forums, Wiki, RSS, Newsletters, Calendar of events

TikiWiki eats its own DogFood



Non Governmental Organization (NGO) profile
www.repex.qc.ca

Blog (one author) / Personal site / family site (A)

So you want your own site? Don't want your digital identity spread out in many places online? (pictures on Flickr, blog on Wordpress, etc)

Blog, Spam Protection, Comments, Wiki, Image Gallery


Too much work to configure (thus the need for a profile). Tiki is overkill for a simple blog. You'll have lots of room to grow.
Not as many nice free themes as other systems such as WordPress

You may want to use the Articles feature instead of blogs

www.marclaporte.com
www.cunningham-lee.com
A lot of people use WordPress for this.

Simple portal / news site (A)

Articles, Wiki, RSS, Menu

Advanced portal / news site (A)

Articles, Wiki, Categories, Menu

Corporate web site (A)

Articles, Wiki, RSS, Menu

Easy to theme


http://www.convention.qc.ca/tiki-switch_lang.php?language=en
http://tikiwiki.org/TikiProfilesSmallBiz

Groupware Wiki / Corporate Wiki / Corporate Intranet / Team project (A)

Wiki, Permissions, Search, LDAP authentication, File Gallery, Tracker

Permissions and number of features. Very strong Wiki.

• Webmail
• No integration/sync with Exchange
• Workspaces would be nice to deal with very large wikis

• The Word Processor being the wiki, Tiki has everything else on this top-10 list. Webmail is poor though.

Public Wiki (A)

Wiki, Spam Protection, Tag

Group knowledge base / Knowledge Management (KM) / institutional memory (A)

Wiki, File gallery, trackers, faq, permission, watch, Search, Categories, tags

Product or software documentation and support (A)

(Collaboratively edited manual)
Goal: print a book, or an offline html version

Wiki, Structure, comments, Image gallery, WebHelp, PluginCode, forum, open bug tracker



Pdf support has been removed


http://support.mozilla.com
http://doc.tikiwiki.org
www.vvvv.org

Customer extranet (B)

register with approval, issue (closed) tracker, forum, wiki, live support

Personal knowledge base / manage my life (B)

Wiki, File gallery, Calendar, trackers or contacts


Wiki is very strong for this.

No sync with PDA, weak webmail

Wiki-based Project Management (PM) (B)

Wiki, Trackers, Categories

Very promising in the wiki-based project management field

Not traditional project management
Missing Gantt charts



www.projectmanagementwiki.org
project management

Glossary / Dictionary / Encyclopedia (B)

Wiki, Search

Writing a book (B)

One or several authors
Some editors & reviewers

wiki, structure, i18n (for translation), Search

Excellent tracking of edits (wiki history)

PDF



www.tmeconomy.org/

Framework / Activity Workflow / Specialized web Application (B)

• Galaxia Workflow engine
• User, Group & permission system
• Smarty Template engine

• When you'll need a generic feature (forum, etc), it's just a click away.
• Easy to customize Tiki
• Trackers can be used to create all the basic forms.

• Weak API.
• Some features could be too far away from what is needed.

• 10 different php frameworks
• Symfony
• CakePHP
• Django
• Ruby on Rails

Document Workflow (B)

Wiki, categories, category permissions, Watch, category watch, category transition

Tracking each edit

Bug or Issue tracker (B)

Trackers


Tricky to configure



Issue Tracker
dev.tikiwiki.org
http://freshmeat.net/browse/1017/

Collaborative research (B)

Wiki, blog, etc

Strong wiki

Missing a way to handle shared bibliography references

Voice-enabled wiki and mobile applications (B)

Wiki, Mobile







http://mobile.tikiwiki.org

Geo CMS (B)

maps






http://maps.tikiwiki.org

Database, forms & reports (B)

tracker

• Better integration of user trackers (forms about users & groups)
• Multi-page forms

Super powerful and nicely integrated with wiki


http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Form_Processors/index.html

Blog (several authors) (C)

Blog, Spam Protection, Comments

Can natively handle multiple blogs

Not as many nice free themes as WordPress

Event Management, Conference Management & planning (C)

Trackers (for user registration), Wiki

Wikis in Plain English / Planning a camping trip

"Email is not good at coordinating and organizing a group's input. This is the old way. The important information is scattered accross everyone's inbox. (...) There is a better way"

Needs a better way to track submissions


http://americana.org/
http://steq.reseau-environnement.com/
http://phpbeer.com (project)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/ocs/
http://www.expectnation.com/
See Citadel Rock Online Communities's EventSoup project

Calendar of events (C)

Calendar, hcalendar microformat




http://upcoming.yahoo.com/

Document Management System (DMS) (C)

File galleries with check-in/checkout, Categories or tags


Does handle non-Web things (OCR, etc)

http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/

SourceForge/Gforge type site (workspaces) (C)

Trackers, wiki, Workspace



http://dev.tikiwiki.org

Translation Management System (TMS) (B)

Wiki, i18n

TikiWiki interface is at least partially translation in 30+ languages
In active development at www.wiki-translation.com
Good back-end architecture & storage

1.9.x was not so intuitive with respect to translation coordination. 2.x is much better
Still missing many front-end tools to help translators


www.wiki-translation.com
http://support.mozilla.com (36 locales!)

Traditional Project Management (PM) with Gantt charts, etc (D)

Wiki, Trackers, Categories, Worskpaces

Very promising in the wiki-based project management field

Not traditional project management
Missing Gantt charts


www.projectmanagementwiki.org
project management

E-learning / Learning Management System (LMS) / classroom / course management system (CMS) (D)

Quiz,

Stronger than most wikis for LMS

Grading, workspaces (class management), etc only available trough mods


http://edu.tikiwiki.org
www.moodle.org

Customer/Contact/Constituent relationship management (CRM) (D)

User profiles
Newsletter

Lots of interest: CRM

TikiWiki could do some of this. It would need quite a bit of configuration. Too much work for a new admin. A profile would be very useful here

Salesforce, civiCRM, sugarCRM, vTiger
http://dev.tikiwiki.org/CRM

Bibliography (D)

Wiki




http://freshmeat.net/browse/1099/
Bibliography management system (references)

E-democracy (D)

polls, trackers




E-Democracy system tutorial

Social networking / Job board / Dating site / hospitality exchange / Car Pooling (D)

User profiles, Forums, Friendship Network, etc

Missing in TikiWiki:

• "transactions" between users
• Reputation / karma system

N/A

TikiWiki is missing a few things to be efficient for this use case. Tiki friends is very basic. It would be possible but clunky to get by with trackers and forums.


www.crashatmine.org/
www.phpbeer.com
www.facebook.com

Collaborative Art and Video Portal (C)

Provides an educational and innovative fun space for creative people to create poetry, stories, painting, and videos. You can also collaborate and edit each other's work.

• Kaltura? collaborative video editing

Still quite new


www.theonlinequilt.com

E-commerce / Shopping cart (E)

TikiWiki is not suitable for e-commerce at the moment. The best you can do is link to Paypal.

Managing products and taking orders with trackers is possible, but it's missing the component to send to PayPal?.
Payment coming to Tiki5

N/A

not suitable yet


PayPalSubscription
shopping cart -> in the works!
www.zencart.com

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) / Accounting (E)

Payment coming to Tiki5
Mod invoice (for small business accounting)
CK-ERP has a TikiWiki integration
Category Transitions engine to code custom processes



http://ck-erp.net/

Related links

• User type
• Major Features Missing In TikiWiki
• Why Wiki Syntax Is Important
• Model
• Wikis Are Now Serious Business : 10 more use cases

Alias

• Use case

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