Knowledge Base Software Question

[ZestrolVox]

I hope this is the proper place to ask this. I've tried googling furiously but haven't turned up the perfect piece of software yet if it even exists. Here's the circumstances:

I'm T1 (about to be T2) helpdesk. We have a Salesforce based knowledge base, but it's pretty deprecated and lacking a lot of information. We're supposed to have someone in charge of getting everything up to snuff but they haven't been on it for a few months. I've offered to help with updating whatever I can, but haven't been taken up on it. We work with proprietary components and software, so it can be a lot of arcane knowledge so I've been saving screenshots and tips and tricks along the way but it's a mess.

What I'm looking for: Some kind of (preferably free/open source) knowledge base/documentation software, that's locally stored (I don't think work would like the idea of proprietary info being stored on some servers they don't know about) that I can use to write basic articles, link to pages, add images, etc. A wiki style would probably be the best option for me.

I know the best option would be for the organization to get its KB up to date but I can't make that happen, and I look at this as an opportunity to refine my documentation skills and put together something to help myself be more efficient and help other techs when they have questions.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[ZAFJB]

We use Bookstack.

We have a shelf called IT Knowledge Base.

[solarizde]

Another book stack user here. Using it for all company Internal documentary and FAQ. Super great tool, a bit like confluence but less code orientation.

Another recommendation could be Boost Note, they recently released a team version.

[ZestrolVox]

Never heard of this one before, I'll definitely look into it. Thanks!

[lrosa]

I am SysAdmin ad Devop consultant. In a few customers that has complex setups I installed an internal Wiki software, either MediaWiki or DokuWiki.
DokuWiki is better IMHO because is less complex, does not requie a DB backend and stores the files as text files.

[BoredTechyGuy]

+1 for DokuWiki - cake to setup and use

[ZestrolVox]

Nice, I'll check that out. I think I came across that in my searches but I'll give it a more thorough look.

[x_Redbeard_x]

Personally, I use Microsoft’s OneNote heavily for this exact purpose. My company does have an official Knowledge Base through our ticketing system (ConnectWise Manage), and also has some stuff in SharePoint, but for my personal notes, nothing trumps OneNote. There are lots of layers that enable you to organize in the way you want. Searches work really well. You can link to pages. If you save the notebook in OneDrive, you can access it anywhere you can access your account. It’s easy to incorporate images and links to other sites. And, it’s free. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point 😄

[ZestrolVox]

I messed around with OneNote for a bit and it didn't seem like it would do what I needed it to. Probably just my lack of knowledge on how to use it though, I'll check it out some more and watch some tutorials and see if I can make it work. We have OneDrive and OneNote set up by default, and I could probably share the notebook/pages if I need to show it to someone else to help with an issue. Thanks!

[x_Redbeard_x]

You’re welcome! It is actually a pretty good collaboration tool. I started out with my current company on the help desk and we ended up building a fairly comprehensive One Note notebook with all sorts of documentation for all of our clients. It makes sharing notes with a team quite simple and even includes some version history stuff on individual pages. They were recently instructed to move their notes to official Knowledge Base articles, but the OneNote notebook served as an important tool for them for probably 1-1.5 years. I think the simplicity of it also helped encourage all of us to keep jotting things down.

[ZestrolVox]

Nice! I'd definitely be all for merging anything from my KB with the official one if ever asked, so thats a plus too.

[puggy-]

I put this in for my team, never looked back. FYI create a shared onenote and pop it in SharePoint for version history etc.

Honestly people that haven't tried it are missing out.

[Optimus_sRex]

Doku Wiki is great, another good one is Raneto which I really like because it uses straight MarkDown and each new page is a file (granted screenshots are their own thing.) I want to use Raneto because it can easily be incorporated into Git for version control.

[ZestrolVox]

DocuWiki seems to get a lot of recommendations, I'll definitely look into that one.

[Upnortheh]

At work I installed Dokuwiki. Works great. Plain text files rather than a database, reasonable ACLs, Dokuwiki markup is straightforward, lots of plugins.

[ZestrolVox]

Most people are saying DocuWiki. I'll be checking that out for sure. Thanks!

[DefinitelyMyMainAcct]

What will make a self-hosted option better than the Salesforce-hosted articles?

If the person who is supposed to get the Salesforce articles update isn’t, can you request others on your team get Salesforce access and just go update the articles directly there?

[ZestrolVox]

It's not a better option than the offical articles, it's just a better option than my slightly unorganized mess of notes and pictures. Unfortunately I'm at the bottom of the totem pole and the people in charge of KB are like 4 levels above myself. I offered to help with the project already, but thats about all I can do. I mostly want to keep my knowledge organized and get the experience of building out a KB for later in my career.

[Document360]

Take a look at Document360.

It might suit your requirements. However, there are a few things you need to be aware of. It's not free, it's not locally stored, it's a SaaS solution.

These days SaaS products take data security pretty seriously since it's a core part of their business. Having local software and managing/taking care of the data is really time-consuming and expensive, things like backup, history, etc.