With Slack becoming the operating system of the workplace, it is increasingly important to integrate more and more workplace tools with the platform. Leading the charge, is fully integrating internal knowledge and documentation with Slack.

Let’s first take a moment to consider what one would ideally like out of a Slack wiki or knowledge base. Building knowledge bases is a well-travelled path, so

1. Hey guys, I think these three tools work so well together, they are literally my bread and butter whenever I start a new project. In this video I go through how I set up Notion, Whimsical and Slack whenever I start a new project, and how they all integrate together seamlessly, with the Slack Notion and Whimsical Notion integrations.
2. Eclipsing one million users, Notion (which bills itself as “the missing half of Slack”) is becoming one of the more interesting and unique productivity tools around. From left to right: Ivan Zhao, Co-founder and CEO, Camille Ricketts, Marketing, Lillie Martin, Community & Support, and David Tibbitts, Community & Support.

• Keyword search
• Authoring tools with rich content
• Content validation
• Accessibility (content links, previews and sharing)
• Reporting and Analytics
• Security

Booz Allen was founded on the notion that we could help companies succeed by bringing them expert, candid advice and an outside perspective on their business. The analysis and perspective generated by that talent can be found in the case studies and thought leadership produced by our people. Notion is an all-in-one style productivity booster. Check our compilation of top Notion tips and tricks to improve your productivity. And connect the template to team’s Slack channel. Notion is an enterprise software startup that offers an 'all-in-one workplace' to help you keep your work management tools, like Slack and Google Docs, organized.; With over a million users, the.

Native Tools

We’re not going to mince words here. If you’re trying to build a knowledge base or wiki in Slack or at least Slack accessible with its native functionality, at the very least, its going to be an uphill battle .

Slack is built for communication and collaboration, but even though its a place where increasingly knowledge is being captured and shared, it has sub-optimal knowledge management tools. That said, there are probably more than you think… and here they are:

Pinning

Pinning is a small but underutilized feature of Slack. You can attach up to 100 important messages to a channel for quicker access without searching for them. This can create a micro store of FAQs for consumption. Using this feature depends on people’s ability to remember that the knowledge is stored in a particular channel.

Readme Files

You can create a readme file and pin it to a channel, much like the previous strategy. This sounds promising, but the file contents are generally not discoverable by Slack’s search algorithm, so this strategy fails unless people know exactly where the file is stored.

Dedicated Knowledge Channel

You can stuff a dedicated channel with knowledge or content, but Slack’s search algorithms isn’t designed for this use case. It’s much better at finding parts of conversations that are relevant to a search and not for structured data. A better approach, with native tools, is to stick with pinning (mentioned above).

Posts

Possibly one of Slack’s best kept secrets is its mini text editor that they call Posts. It is actually a very tidy way to create public or private content that a can be shared within a channel or via DM. Posts allow for basic text styling and hyperlinking, but no rich content. Posts have a timestamp that shows when content was created and edited, which serves as a basic content validation tool. They are also discoverable via the Slack search bar. The main drawbacks of Posts are that they can’t really be organized nicely and they can be somewhat obfuscated since they are stored together with all other files shared in Slack, which is accessed through Slack’s File Browser.

Slack Y Notion

Conclusion

Even with Posts, Slack’s native tools really don’t achieve all of the objectives that are required by a veritable wiki or knowledge base solution – but it is a starting point. With that in mind, let’s expand our scope to third party tools.

Third Party Integrations

With the native tools exhausted, this opens up the opportunity to bring third-party integrations to Slack to bring wiki-like access.

Many organizations utilize authoring tools like Confluence or Google Drive to store company knowledge, templates and documents. Wouldn’t it be great if you could bring those into Slack? You can… sort of .

If you store any form of documentation in third party tools like Google Drive, Confluence, Dropbox, Box the good news is that you can integrate them with Slack to bring a richer experience for interacting with those files. The good news is, these types of integrations address issues around knowledge accessibility , but that is pretty much where it ends. The bad news is, these integrations are quite limited, highlighted by these shortcomings:

• No search for filenames or contents
• No authoring tools
• Content validation may be limited to update notifications
• No reporting or analytics to understand how content is consumed

Conclusion

While many of the knowledge or storage related integrations facilitate some sharing and accessibility constraints of the Slack platform, they do have some significant drawbacks.

Third Party Deep Integrations

The final consideration for how to create a wiki or knowledge base in Slack is by utilizing a deep integration app, like Obie. The features that are missing from the first two strategies were: search (arguably the most important), comprehensive authoring tools, content validation, security considerations and reporting/analytics.

We have written a blog that delves into great detail a comparison of Slack wiki alternatives, but for now let’s limit our focus to how Obie allows teams to build a wiki in Slack.

Authoring Tools

Slack Notion Outage

FAQs

Slack conversations can be a tremendous source of untapped organizational knowledge. Obie allows you to turn any message into a stored, validated, accessible, snippet of knowledge just by clicking on any message – called an Obie FAQ. This powerful capture mechanism creates a lightning-fast way to build a knowledge base right from a workflow. Obie treats FAQs as snippets, much like Slack Posts. Styling is limited in the interest of delivering relevant knowledge fast directly within Slack.

Rich Text Editor

Obie also offers a robust rich-content knowledge base authoring solution. This is delineated from FAQs in that it is designed to deliver a more structured and content-rich medium. Obie Knowledge Base documentation is organized in “Books”, “Chapters” and “Pages” to deliver a structure that suits documentation in a workplace setting .

Search

The ability to search for keywords in a knowledge base or wiki is absolutely mission critical to productivity . While Slack’s capability search can find keywords in conversations, it is limited to files that are shared in public channels. For this reason, one can’t rely on Slack’s native search capabilities to source unshared knowledge.

Obie takes search to another level. Obie provides federated search to provide visibility to the various silos where knowledge might be stored, which can be in Obie’s native knowledge base or FAQs. You can search all connected knowledge silos by providing a few keywords to Obie via Direct Message (DM) or by using the /obie command with the relevant keywords to search for knowledge, wherever it lives. Of course, it can be conveniently shared directly in the channel if a solution is found.

Content Validation

Knowledge eventually becomes out-of-date , so validation is a big part of keeping a trusted source of information available to all. Obie provides both timestamps on content and search results, as well as reminders to validate knowledge (via Slack notifications) to ensure that the most up-to-date knowledge is shared.

Reporting and Analytics

Analytics have increasing importance particularly as companies scale through employee headcount. Analytics help identify knowledge gaps and confirm the suspicions that company leadership might have about product issues or organizational bottlenecks. Obie has an analytics tool suite that can identify trends and surface underlying issues before they become massive problems.

Security

Security and privacy is a primary concern for more and more teams. Obie respects your privacy and does not make any copies of content that you may store in siloed knowledge (eg. Google Drive, Confluence, Dropbox, Box). This ensures that your competitive advantage is kept within your company.

Notion Todoist Integration

Conclusion

While creating a robust knowledge base or wiki in Slack with its own native tools can be achieved, ultimately, they are not optimized for this function. Instead, consider pursuing a knowledge base solution that bears all of the features of a robust wiki solution AND is built with a deep and purposeful integration with Slack.

Hey 👋 first check out Obie’s Slack wiki in action! — Watch Fastest Demo Video Ever

Modern challenges require modern solutions. Digital technologies help us overcome the most difficult situations. Would you believe 10 years ago that working remotely could be as effective as working in the office? Today it is so. More and more companies, including small and large ones, are moving to a new working format. A lot of people prefer to work remotely and many employers support this new trend!

Such a transition of people from offices to remote work, without losing efficiency, became possible thanks to the development and implementation of special teamwork programs. Slack rightfully occupies a leading position in the segment. Today Slack is a convenient and effective task manager, which is already used by tens of millions of clients from all over the world, including large companies. Slack has a wide range of tools for organizing workflow and communication between team members.

It is worth highlighting a few points, which make the communication tool so effective and popular. First, there is a full-fledged free working version with an unlimited period. Of course, in order to take advantage of all the available features, you need to choose from several very affordable paid plans. Secondly, Slack has the ability to integrate with various applications, which complement its functionality.

One of these teamwork add-ons is wikis software, or simply wikis. We have tested various wikis for Slack and prepared the most effective and useful ones that really improve your remote work efficiency! Let’s take a closer look at them.

List of the most useful and effective Wikis for Slack

First, let’s answer the question: “What is wiki software?” In short, a collection of collaboration tools allows users to create and edit a variety of content through a single workspace. Since Slack has the ability to integrate third-party applications into its environment, you can install additional software, including wiki applications, which are tailored specifically for your industry. By adding Slack to an existing wiki project, you can access the entire knowledge base without leaving the conversation. This kind of integration greatly improves remote work, making your teamwork more efficient. We invite you to pay attention to the following Slack’s wikis.

Notion

Notion is an application for creating text documents, to-do lists, notes, databases, spreadsheets, kanban boards, etc. The software provides tools for project management and teamwork. The functionality allows you not to jump between the tabs of various services, and have everything you need in one place. Notion has a free plan, which is great for both personal use and beginner projects. Integration with Slack allows you to send changes and updates on any Notion page directly to the selected channel of the task manager. We use Notion internally at Clerk and love it.

Slicki

Slicki is a popular Slack’s wiki software. Slicki integrates directly into Slack. It allows team members to work with information right in the Slack environment. What benefits will you get?

• Easy access to information
• Working with knowledge bases
• Managing tasks using wiki pages
• Create documentation based on posts in Slack channels
• Simple rights management
• Work on all devices, including gadgets and much more

It’s worth noting that Slicki has a 30 day free trial. During this time, you have access to all the features of the software. Be sure to give Slicki a try and decide whether to use paid mode or not.

Tettra

Tettra is another popular wiki for Slack, which stands out from the competition with its simple and free plan. The main feature of Tettra is the option to document things and tasks, which require a more detailed description.

Notion Slack Community

This wiki has great integration with Slack as well as other useful applications like GoogleDocs, GitHub, Zapier, etc. Choosing Tettra gives you an easy-to-use editor of content editing. It’s an amazing Slack wiki for a small team.

SlimWiki

Using Slack and looking for a wiki app? Pay attention to the simple, but at the same time effective and well-crafted software, known as SlimWiki. Perfectly working integration will allow team members to easily manage images, videos, attachments, and of course text content. SlimWiki provides great features, among which the unique ones should be highlighted:

Slack Notion Integration

• Detailed history of changes to all wiki pages. You can always check what changes a particular team member made
• Full control over page visibility. You can make a limitation for a specific team member if needed

Unfortunately, the free version only exists for 3 users. But this is enough to evaluate the product and either choose a different one or buy a subscription.

Slack Vs Notion

Obie

Notion Slack App

Obie has the most powerful Slack integration. This wiki software has excellent functionality that expands the capabilities of remote teamwork. It is important to note that Obie divides all knowledge formats into two types:

• Knowledge Base is a classic wiki format for information processing. You can work with text, embed pictures, GIFs, videos, web pages and much more
• FAQs are a unique format for storing unstyled content. Each team member has quick access to the categories in this section

Do you already have information in various applications (e.g. Google Drive, Evernote, etc.)? Don’t worry. Obie software binds all databases in one place to improve the quality of your work! You can access the shared database directly from Slack! Obie is the choice for professionals and really big teams.

There are actually many more wikis out there with all the pros and cons. But we have reviewed and selected the most popular and proven applications. Moreover, the above wikis for Slack have either free or trial versions. You can try each one and choose the most suitable software without paying a cent! Don’t hesitate, feel free to integrate wikis with Slack and use them to achieve new success!