This is the responsibility of the Profiles Team and Communications Team.

Introduction

Tiki is a Wiki / Content Management System (CMS) / Groupware.

These are broad and vague terms.

• Wikis can be used for so many things. A public encyclopedia is very different than a corporate wiki.
• Groupware can be defined as "software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve their goals". This is very vague.
• Content Management System (CMS) is especially a vague term: A "system to manage content". Just about anything can fit that definition! A computer and a filing a cabinet are a CMS 😊

Tiki enthusiasts will tell you that Tiki is a jack-of-all-trades, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, all-in-one tool which lets you do just about "anything". It could power probably over 90% of the websites in the World (Let's face it, most sites are pretty simple!). But of course, you don't want to do "anything". You have a specific objective/community/project in mind. This page will define a bit more the different ways to use Tiki.

With Tiki, you can pick & choose which features are turned on. Chances are, your project will be a combination of a few 'Use Cases'. So you can use the combined features of all appropriate use cases.

Why cater to so many use cases? A bit like speaking many languages from the same root (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, etc.), once you know 3 or 4, the 5th and 6th are easier to learn because you already have many bases. Some words are the same, or similar enough that you can get by. So each Use Case is easier & easier.

Similar to the list of features, rating (A, B, C, D, E) are to compare Tiki as an overall solution for these use cases, compared to "industry standards" in the Open Source World. So "A" means that Tiki is, for this Use Case, just as good as any other Open Source project. "A" does not mean "Perfect" or that it has all the features. Some features may be weak but compensated by other strong features. The ratings are based on the latest stable version of Tiki. If you disagree with a rating, please change it and edit the Strengths/Weaknesses sections accordingly.

ToDo

1. These ratings needs to be split, like in features:
   • Setup/admin UI: How easy / intuitive is to setup this feature?
   • UI end user : Once setup, how easy / intuitive is it for the end-user? (was it worth it?)
   • Stability: How many bugs left?
   • Feature-set / power: How does this feature compare to other Open Source apps?
2. Move to a SWOT format

Please do add links to your Tiki-powered sites which fit a profile.

Each Use Case will eventually need an installation profile to make it easy for people to get going when they install Tiki.

Format:

!!! Use Case and Rating (A,B,C,D,E)
Description of Use case, which will eventually be a profile (who/what/etc)

-=Key features=-
Including links to the proper documentation page. This will make it easier to evaluate/understand.

-=Strengths=-
Why is Tiki good at this?

-=Weaknesses=-
Why is Tiki not so good?

-=Examples & related links=-
Some good examples of live sites (Tiki or otherwise)

List of "Use Cases" for Tiki

This is not a list of features. It's what you can do once you combine those features.

Online community / association / club / special interest group / NGO (A)

non profit or association of professionals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software

User trackers (user profiles) for membership management, Wiki user pages, Forums, Wiki, RSS, Newsletters, Calendar of events

Tiki eats its own DogFood

Non Governmental Organization (NGO) profile

Blog (one author) / Personal site / family site (A)

So you want your own site? Don't want your digital identity spread out in many places online? (pictures on Flickr, blog on Wordpress, etc)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Blog, Spam Protection, Comments, Wiki, Image Gallery

Too much work to configure (thus the need for a profile). Tiki is overkill for a simple blog. You'll have lots of room to grow. 😊
Not as many nice free themes as other systems such as WordPress

You may want to use the Articles feature instead of blogs

www.cunningham-lee.com
www.amette.eu
A lot of people use WordPress for this.

Simple portal / news site (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_System

Articles, Wiki, RSS, Menu

Advanced portal / news site (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal

Articles, Wiki, Categories, Menu

Corporate web site (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brochureware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_content_management

Articles, Wiki, RSS, Menu

Easy to theme

Featured Tikis
http://tiki.org/TikiProfilesSmallBiz

Groupware Wiki / Corporate Wiki / Corporate Intranet / Team project (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki

Wiki, Permissions, Search, LDAP authentication, File Gallery, Tracker

Permissions and number of features. Very strong Wiki.

• Webmail
• No integration/sync with Exchange
• Workspaces would be nice to deal with very large wikis

• The Word Processor being the wiki, Tiki has everything else on this top-10 list. Webmail is poor though.

Group knowledge base / Knowledge Management (KM) / institutional memory (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_base
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management_software

Wiki, File gallery, trackers, faq, permission, watch, Search, Categories, tags

Customer extranet / Help Desk / Product or software documentation and support (A)

(Collaboratively edited manual)
Goal: print a book, or an offline html version
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_desk

register with approval, issue (closed) tracker, forum, wiki, live support, Structure, comments, Image gallery, WebHelp, PluginCode, forum, open bug tracker

Pdf support has been removed

http://doc.tiki.org

Wiki-based Project Management (PM) (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_2.0

Wiki, Trackers, Categories

Very promising in the wiki-based project management field

Not traditional project management
Missing Gantt charts

www.projectmanagementwiki.org
project management

Framework / Activity Workflow / Specialized web Application (B)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_framework

• Category Transitions can be used as a Workflow engine
• User, Group & permission system
• Smarty Template engine
• Includes Zend Framework, Smarty and jQuery

• When you'll need a generic feature (forum, etc), it's just a click away.
• Easy to customize Tiki
• Trackers can be used to create all the basic forms.

• Weak API.
• Some features could be too far away from what is needed.

• 10 different php frameworks
• Symfony
• CakePHP
• Django
• Ruby on Rails

Document Workflow (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow

Wiki, categories, category permissions, Watch, category watch, category transition

Tracking each edit

Collaborative research (A)

Wiki, blog, etc

Strong wiki

Missing a way to handle shared bibliography references

Voice-enabled wiki and mobile applications (B)

Wiki, Mobile

http://mobile.tiki.org

Geo CMS (B)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geospatial_Content_Management_System

maps

http://profiles.tiki.org/Cartograf

Database, forms & reports (A)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_%28web%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete

• tracker
• Better integration of user trackers (forms about users & groups)
• Multi-page forms

Super powerful and nicely integrated with wiki

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Form_Processors/index.html

Blog (several authors) (C)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Blog, Spam Protection, Comments

Can natively handle multiple blogs

Not as many nice free themes as WordPress

Event Management, Conference Management & planning (C)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_management_software

Trackers (for user registration), Wiki

Wikis in Plain English / Planning a camping trip

"Email is not good at coordinating and organizing a group's input. This is the old way. The important information is scattered accross everyone's inbox. (...) There is a better way"

Needs a better way to track submissions

http://americana.org/
http://steq.reseau-environnement.com/
http://phpbeer.com (project)
http://freshmeat.net/projects/ocs/
http://www.expectnation.com/
See Citadel Rock Online Communities's EventSoup project

Document Management System (DMS) (B)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_management_system

File galleries with check-in/checkout, Categories or tags
WebDAV

Does handle non-Web things (OCR, etc)

http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/

SourceForge/Gforge type site (workspaces) (B)

Trackers, wiki, Workspace

http://dev.tiki.org

Translation Management System (TMS) (B)

Wiki, i18n

Tiki interface is at least partially translation in 35+ languages
In active development at www.wiki-translation.com
Good back-end architecture & storage

1.9.x was not so intuitive with respect to translation coordination. 2.x is much better
Still missing many front-end tools to help translators

www.wiki-translation.com
http://support.mozilla.com (36 locales!)

Traditional Project Management (PM) with Gantt charts, etc (D)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_software

Wiki, Trackers, Categories, Worskpaces

Very promising in the wiki-based project management field

Not traditional project management
Missing Gantt charts

www.projectmanagementwiki.org
project management

E-learning / Learning Management System (LMS) / classroom / course management system (CMS) / Coaching communities (D)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
Support coaching activities and education communities.

Quiz,

Stronger than most wikis for LMS

Grading, workspaces (class management), etc only available trough mods

http://edu.tiki.org
www.moodle.org
http://coggno.com

Customer/Contact/Constituent relationship management (CRM) (D)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Membership_software

User profiles
Newsletter

Lots of interest: CRM

Tiki could do some of this. It would need quite a bit of configuration. Too much work for a new admin. A profile would be very useful here

Salesforce, civiCRM, sugarCRM, vTiger
http://dev.tiki.org/CRM

Bibliography (D)

Wiki

http://freshmeat.net/browse/1099/
Bibliography management system (references)

E-democracy (C)

polls, trackers

E-Democracy system tutorial

Collaborative Art and Video Portal (C)

Provides an educational and innovative fun space for creative people to create poetry, stories, painting, and videos. You can also collaborate and edit each other's work.

• Kaltura collaborative video editing

Still quite new

www.theonlinequilt.com

Related links

• User type
• Major Features Missing In Tiki
• Why Wiki Syntax Is Important
• Model
• Wikis Are Now Serious Business : 10 more use cases
• Testing at Major use cases

Alias

• Use case