Too many things happening on the wiki and you're having a tough time keeping track of changes? XWiki comes with many features that help you stay up to date with the wiki activity that is relevant to you. You can:
- Watch a wiki, space, page
- Follow what's happening on the wiki from the activity stream
- Use RSS feeds to stay updated
- Send specific pages by email to users
- Use history to see page modifications
By reading this blog post you will learn more about each of these features and how to use them.
Watch a wiki, space, page
One of the things people love about XWiki is the ability to watch global activity on the wiki and to receive email updates every time something changes. This is easy to do by clicking the "Watch Wiki" link from the wiki menu located at the top of every page.
A very useful feature, especially when it comes to large wikis, is the ability to track changes on a selected number of pages and spaces. Imagine your team has a dedicated space on the wiki and you are mostly interested in your team's updates. You shouldn't have to constantly check the wiki for updates and you don't need to. You can simply click on the watch link in the space menu and an email will be sent to your email address tracking all the changes for that space. Notifications on selected spaces can also be tracked via RSS. The same applies to individual pages you watch.
It's up to you to decide what the frequency for the notifications is (hourly, daily or even weekly).
You can read more about the watchlist application on xwiki.org.
Follow what's happening on the wiki from the activity stream
Another way to stay up to date with what's happening in the wiki is by scrolling through the Activity Stream located on the wiki homepage. Starting with XWiki Enterprise 2.6 a newly improved activity stream is available, with a much richer user interface. Use the Activity Stream to get a quick glimpse at what pages were lastly modified, who made changes on the documents and even how many updates where performed.
Use RSS feeds to stay updated
For RSS fans we've already mentioned the watchlist notifications. You can also subscribe to the global RSS feed and receive updates about all the activity on your wiki. In addition it's possible to have an RSS feed on a specific search query term. To generate such a feed, go to the Search page, run a search on a keyword and then click on the RSS icon.
Send specific pages by email to users
XWiki Enterprise 2.6 introduced the possibility to share a page by email. This is especially useful when you want to share a page with people who don't necessarily have a wiki account. To do this hover over the "Page" menu and click "Share by email".
A popup will appear which will allow you to send a customized message to the recipient(s).
Use history to see page modifications
Last, but not least to see the versions of a document you can also look in the "History" tab located at the bottom of every wiki page. Besides listing the document versions, the history page can also be used to compare any two versions.
The upcoming version of XWiki Open Source will feature the brand new User Status feature which will allow you to post status messages from the wiki homepage and the user profile. Stay tuned for the XWiki Open Source 3.0 release later this month to see the User Status in action.
