Wikis FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Wikis.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Wikis Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure anything before people can start using Wikis?
No. Once you enable Wikis from Admin → Apps → All Apps, the defaults are ready to use: new pages start as drafts with edit permission set to Admin and Creator, comments open to Any User, and visibility set to Everyone. Global search inclusion, PDF export and the Wikis AI Agent (so people can ask Ask AI about wiki content) are all on by default. The only setting that is off by default is Notify on Wiki Publish — turn it on in Wikis Settings if you want a page’s publication announced.
Who can create wiki pages?
Whoever the Who can create a wiki page? setting in Wikis Settings allows — everyone who can use the app, by default. The creator manages the page — its edit and comment permissions, through the Properties panel — until they transfer management to someone else. Only admins and designated Wikis app admins can access Wikis Settings, manage templates, and reorder pages. The person who manages a deleted page can restore it from All Wikis ▾ → Trash — including a page that went to Trash with the page above it; a Wikis app admin can restore any deleted page they can read, and a business admin any page.
What is a Wikis app admin, and how do I designate one?
A Wikis app admin is a non-admin user who has been granted app-level administrative access. You assign app admins from Admin > Apps > App Admins. An app admin can open Wikis Settings, manage templates, reorder pages, break edit locks, restore deleted pages they can read, and delete any comment. Editing, archiving, deleting or transferring other people’s pages, and the Stale view, stay with business admins and each page’s manager.
Permissions and access
Who can edit a page, and how do I change that?
Each wiki page has its own edit permission, set by the page’s manager or an admin in the Properties panel. The two choices are:
- Admin and Creator (default) — only the page’s manager (its creator, unless management was transferred) and admins can edit.
- Any User — anyone who can read the page can also edit it.
A page can also be closed to edits with the Lock Editing switch in Properties.
Regardless of the setting, an archived page can be content-edited only by its manager and admins.
How does page visibility work?
Each page has a visibility setting in Properties:
- Everyone (default) — all users in the organization can view it once it is published.
- Specific Groups — only members of the selected groups (plus the page’s manager and admins) can view it.
- Only me — only the page’s manager can view it. Admins can also access it.
Unpublished drafts are visible only to the person who manages them and admins.
Why can’t some of my employees see a wiki page?
The most common causes are: the page is still in Draft status (only its manager and admins see drafts), the page is Archived, or its visibility is set to Specific Groups or Only me. Check the page’s status badge and its Properties panel. Published pages with visibility set to Everyone are available to all users.
Day-to-day
How does edit locking work, and what if someone’s lock gets stuck?
When someone starts editing a page, an edit lock is automatically acquired. The lock prevents other users from making simultaneous edits. It keeps renewing for as long as the editor is open, and leaving the editor frees the page at once. If the editor’s browser stops answering (a lost connection, a crash or a sleeping laptop), the lock times out after the Edit Lock Timeout set in Settings (default 30 minutes, adjustable from 1 to 1,440 minutes). When the page frees up, everyone who chose Notify when free is told.
If a lock gets stuck, any admin or app admin can break it with Break Lock (in the page’s Wiki Tools menu or the edit-lock dialog). The Ask edit button in that dialog lets a waiting user send the lock holder a notification (throttled to one every 10 minutes).
How does version history work?
Every save of a published wiki creates a numbered version. Open Wiki Tools › Version History to open any previous version, compare any two versions side by side with highlighted additions and removals, and see who made each change and when. Restoring an earlier version creates a new version with a Restored label, so nothing is lost. Version history is only generated for published pages — edits to drafts are not versioned.
Can I use templates, and who manages them?
Yes. Admins and Wikis app admins create templates from the Templates tab — each template has a name (up to 100 characters), a body, an optional category and icon, and an optional cover image. One template per organization can be marked as the default. When any user creates a new wiki, they can choose a template to pre-populate the page’s structure and content.
How do I transfer management of a wiki?
Open the page’s Wiki Tools menu and select Transfer management. Both admins and the page’s current manager can transfer it. The new manager must be an active member of the organization. The transfer is recorded in version history. If the previous manager no longer has access to the page after the transfer (for example, a draft or a visibility-restricted page), they land on All Wikis instead.
Transferring management does not change the page’s Owner (below).
What is a wiki’s Owner?
Properties › Owner names who answers for keeping a page’s content right — a person, a team, or both. It is separate from who manages the page: naming an owner does not change who can edit, manage or transfer it. Until an owner is named, the page’s manager answers for it. Owners find their pages, with the date each is due for review, under Content I own in the account menu.
What happens to the wiki pages of someone who leaves?
When an admin hands a leaver’s content on — Reassign all under Admin › Content Governance, or an Offboarding plan — the pages the leaver manages move with it: the new person manages them (they can edit, publish, archive, delete and transfer them) and is told “You now manage N wikis”, with a link to their Mine list. A page the new person cannot open stays with the leaver, and the admin is told how many; an admin can hand each of those on from its Wiki Tools › Transfer management.
How deep can sub-wikis be nested?
Pages can be nested up to 5 levels deep (for example, Company > Product > Version > Section > Page). The Add sub-wiki action and the parent picker automatically prevent you from exceeding this limit. Existing hierarchies that were deeper than 5 levels before the limit was introduced still work — they just cannot be pushed deeper.
What can Ask AI do with wikis, and what is left to admins?
With the Wikis AI Agent on (Wikis → Settings), people can ask Ask AI to find, read and summarise wikis they can open, see a page’s details, revisions and comments, and get counts such as how many wikis there are, which are most or least viewed and which are outdated. It only ever shows pages the person could open themselves.
It can also write, and every write asks for a Confirm first, one wiki at a time (a request such as “delete every wiki” is declined):
- Create a new page — always as a draft, and only for people the Who can create a wiki page? setting allows.
- Edit a page’s title or body — only where the person could press Edit on the web. A page with Lock Editing on can be changed by admins only, and Ask AI says so.
- Set a page’s Owner — for admins and the page’s manager.
- Publish, archive, send back to draft or delete — the same people as the page’s Wiki Tools menu: company admins and the page’s manager. A page with Lock Editing on can’t be published, archived or sent back to draft by its manager until the lock is off.
Ask AI cannot list who has read a page. Administrators and the page’s manager can open the page’s view count to see its Viewed by list.
Notifications
What notifications does Wikis send, and can I control them?
Three switches in Wikis Settings turn whole notification types on or off for everyone:
- Notify on New Comments (on by default) — the page’s manager (or its named Owner, if the manager has left) is told when someone comments on the page, and a comment’s author is told when someone replies to it.
- Notify Users on @Mention (on by default) — a user is told when mentioned in a comment. Mentions to users who cannot read the page are not sent.
- Notify on Wiki Publish (off by default) — this app’s admins, or the group you choose, are told when a page is published, unless only its writer can read it. Users who cannot read the page are excluded, and each time a page goes live nobody is told about it twice.
Wikis also sends notices that no Wikis Settings switch turns off: edits others make to pages you manage, management handed to or from you, pages moved to Trash, Ask edit requests, a lock taken over by an admin, and a page you asked about becoming free (Notify when free). Page review reminders are switched on under Content Governance in the admin area.
Every Wikis notification also follows each person’s own notification preferences. A page going live has its own switch, New and updated pages — so someone who wants the publish announcement but not the day-to-day traffic, or the other way round, can have it. Everything else follows Wikis: comments on a page you manage, mentions, Ask edit requests and edits others make to pages you manage can arrive in the app, by email, or neither, as each person chooses. The rest — replies to your comments, management handed to or from you, a page’s status changed, pages moved to Trash, a lock taken over and a page becoming free — arrive in the app only.
How do I let everyone know about a page?
Once a page is published, the person who manages it, Wikis admins and company admins can use Tell people in the page’s Wiki Tools menu, or from the Your wiki is live message right after publishing. It can post the page on the company feed, send a notice in the app (by email too, if you choose), or both — to everyone who can read the page, or only some of them — and post it in the chat rooms, or Microsoft Teams or Slack channels, you find by name and pick: one post in each, which everyone in the room sees, with a link only the page’s readers can open (and no title, when not everyone can read the page). The page lists each of those posts, and you can remove one there. Nobody is told twice each time the page goes live, and people Notify on Wiki Publish already told are skipped. The feed post reaches only the people who can open the page, and it comes down if the page is unpublished, archived or moved to Trash, or who can read it or the groups it’s shared with change.
You can add a note, and Suggest a line drafts one for you.
To send a page to one chat room, a Microsoft Teams or Slack channel, or a colleague, use Share instead. Anyone who can open the page has it — next to Wiki Tools, in that menu, and on the phone — and Ask AI can do it too. It sends the page’s title, your note and a link — never the page itself — and only people who can open the page get past the link. A page not everyone can read (a draft, an archived page, or one kept to some groups or to its manager) goes without its title, since everyone in a room or channel sees the post. Archiving a page or moving it to Trash deletes those posts; publishing or restoring it later does not bring them back.
When something looks wrong
“I can’t export this page to PDF”
PDF export requires two things to be true: the app-wide Allow PDF Export setting in Wikis Settings must be on (it is on by default), and the page’s own Allow PDF Export switch in Properties must also be on (also on by default). If either is off, Export PDF does not appear in the page’s Wiki Tools menu.
“My edits disappeared after someone else saved”
Edit locking prevents simultaneous edits, and the lock keeps renewing while the editor is open. Someone else can save first only if the editor’s browser stopped answering long enough for the lock to time out (the Edit Lock Timeout, default 30 minutes) or an admin broke the lock. Either way, the next Save opens a conflict dialog where Duplicate as New Draft keeps the unsaved text, and anything saved over can be recovered from Wiki Tools › Version History.
“A wiki page looks outdated but nobody has touched it”
Published pages that have not been updated or confirmed still accurate within the stale threshold show a May be outdated badge to everyone who can open them; business admins also see them under the Stale count and filter. The threshold is configured in Settings under Stale Wiki Threshold with choices of 90, 120 (default), 365, or 730 days. This is informational — it does not change the page’s status. Editing and saving the page, or its owner answering Still accurate when its review is due, resets the clock. Wikis Settings sends no reminder itself: the weekly review reminder (to the page’s owner, else its owning team, else the person who manages it) is part of Content Governance in the admin area.
Licensing and limits
Does Wikis require a licence?
Yes. Wikis requires a licence and is disabled by default. An administrator enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps for your organization.
Are there limits I should know about?
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Title length | 255 characters |
| Description length | 500 characters |
| Comment length | 2,000 characters |
| Tag name length | 50 characters |
| Template name length | 100 characters |
| Cover image size | 10 MB (JPEG, PNG, WebP, or GIF) |
| Inline image upload size | 10 MB (JPEG, PNG, WebP, or GIF) |
| Page attachments | Up to 5 files, each up to 10 MB |
| Comment attachments | Up to 5 files, each up to 10 MB |
| Sub-wiki nesting depth | 5 levels |
| Edit lock timeout | 1–1,440 minutes (default 30) |
| Comment edit window | 15 minutes after posting (admins: unlimited) |
| Comment delete window | 5 minutes after posting for its author (the page’s manager, business admins and Wikis app admins: any time) |
| View counting | Every open counts as a view, including the same person’s repeat visits; Viewed by counts people |
More help
- Wikis Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Wikis questions from these articles.