Foswiki At Work

This is a kick-start topic for a book, working title "Foswiki at Work". The book will be written online, collaboratively, and will be made available in print (probably via Lulu). Any contributor must agree that all profits from book sales go to the Foswiki Association.

The goal of the book is to present real-life examples of how Foswiki is applied to different problems in the workplace, in the public web, and at home.

Index proposal, showing the structure of the book.

What's in this book

There have been many books published about wikis. Apart from brief mentions of other implementations, this book is not about wikis in general, it's about Foswiki. Our goal is to show you how Foswiki can be used to solve some common problems. We're going to do this by describing scenarios that have been encountered in real life, in industry, in the public web, and by people working at home, that have all been solved using Foswiki. And we're going to give you sufficient detail that you can implement these solutions for yourself.

All the scenarios in this book start from a basic Foswiki VM (virtual machine) installation using Debian Linux, as downloaded from Foswiki.org. Where additional extensions are required, these have been listed together with any customisation that was required.

What's a Wiki, and how Foswiki is, and isn't, a Wiki

Wikis

• Made famous by wikipedia
• Text and formatting
• Collaborative editing
• Wiki society, rules of engagement, how people work together

Great for building web pages collaboratively. But breaks down when your data is more than just a big flat list - like it usually is.

Foswiki

• Where it came from
• All the power of a wiki, tagging, linking, but also has structured data, like a database
• Powerful database-like queries, flexible result presentation
• Really fast application development
• Huge database of extensions
• Foswiki is more than just a tool you download and use - it's a community

The Basics

When you use the Foswiki VM, getting up and running is really easy. Here's how.....

Scenarios

Foswiki at home

• Personal information manager (PIM)

Foswiki behind a Firewall

• Team Information Manager (TIM)
• Project tracking and reporting framework
• Meetings and Minutes
• Building forms
• Integrating with Email
• Foswiki as a data source for specialist applications

Foswiki on the Web

• How this book was written
• Publishing and managing websites with completely customized layouts

FEEL FREE TO ADD SCENARIOS