Information Management

We looked at four information management utilities: Guru (SaaS Only), FOS (Local Only; installed at http://ultra.guide), wikijs (Local or SaaS), and Outline (Local or SaaS). A comparison of all four is at InfoMgmtComparison. Although wikijs initially appeared to be the most powerful, it was a beast to administer and most of the advertised features didn't really work under the hood. FOS is not as pretty, but meets all the requirements and is only $3 a month with unlimited storage, bandwidth, and number of users (and we can install the interactive tools server on the same machine). Guru is the best at controlled documents, handling approval paths, and alerting administrators to stale documentation. Its AI-driven search capabilities, however, are unlikely to surpass traditional grep/regex-based search mechanisms, especially until a training set of 5000+ documents is available.

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Proposed solution:

• Buy Guru accounts for the 5-10 people who manage internal controlled documentation (e.g. policies, HR, recruitment, onboarding) -- up to $140/mo ($1680/yr)
• Use FOS (http://ultra.guide) to collect all other information & to act as the "glue" -- $3/mo ($36/yr)
• Make links available for Public Guru Cards/Collections on FOS

Governance:

• Kelley manages and curates content development on Guru
• Nicole administers FOS infrastructure and backups
• SLT distributes management and curation of FOS webs across SLT and management teams
• SLT + Managers develop Project Plan to initially populate Guru+FOS and roll out to staff on April 10

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Nicole's requirements (in order of priority) were:

1. Solid code editor that preferably supports conventions for multiple common languages - Guru and Outline couldn't do it, Wikijs was great, FOS was OK but not as great as Wikijs
2. Easy graph/flowchart generator - Guru and Outline couldn't do it, Wikijs and FOS were great
3. Capable search - Guru seems OK but untestable until large training set is in place; Wikijs and Outline were OK but not great; FOS is strong and highly customizable
4. Easy to create new information - Ease of use is a really personal thing, but the only one I found difficult to use was Outline; Guru, Wikijs, FOS were all straightforward
5. Handles math notation - Only FOS could do it
6. Access to raw files/attachments for backups & to reduce risk - Not possible with Guru, Difficult but doable with Wikijs and Outline, Easy with FOS
7. (nice to have) Analytics -- Guru has an internal dashboard, Outline & FOS have Google Analytics integration, Wikijs had a huge gap here with nothing to fill it
8. (nice to have) Straightforward administration, if installed Local - Wikijs was great but lots of holes, Outline was bad, FOS had a learning curve but OK

I didn't find Slack integration to be desirable at all (although I know some people would like that) - Guru and Outline is native, FOS and Wikijs require some programming but it's possible.

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References

• Kelley's Original KM Notes Deck
• InfoMgmtTypes - varieties of information that need to be stored and shared
• InfoMgmtComparison - characteristics of info mgmt systems under consideration
• InfoMgmtGraph - picture showing where different kinds of information are stored
• InfoMgmtWebs - what info can be stored in each of the wiki webs
• InfoMgmtPersonalPerspective - where should I create/store my content? a guide for individuals

-- NicoleRadziwill - 19 Mar 2020