BlueSpice

BlueSpice MediaWiki

BlueSpice is an open source business wiki for professional knowledge and information management. It is based on MediaWiki, the software of Wikipedia (therefore "BlueSpice MediaWiki") enhancing it with enterprise functions such as

a visual editor for simple and intuitive text and table editing,
a high-performance search (Elastic Search),
interfaces to common enterprise IT applications (e.g. LDAP),
administrative rights including user and group management,
improvements with regard to system / IT security as well as
custom trainings and complementary services.

BlueSpice is programmed in PHP and can be operated on Windows and Linux systems. In order to guarantee the stability and expandability of the system, the programming code of MediaWiki is not modified. BlueSpice is published under the GPL v3 license and delivered in three editions:

BlueSpice free

BlueSpice free is a free of charge extraction from BlueSpice pro with a smaller range of functions (see Functions at a glance). The software is mainly used by teams and smaller companies / organizations that need a central knowledge base or are looking for a MediaWiki with more convenience and business functions.

BlueSpice pro

As an enterprise wiki, BlueSpice pro is optimized for use in medium-sized and large companies as well as in public institutions and organizations. The software is delivered with an extended range of functions (see Functions at a glance), a growing number of extensions and professional support. BlueSpice pro extends BlueSpice free with the following functions:

a workflow tool for professional quality assurance (including read, write, comment, delete and release rights),
organization manuals including an export function (PDF),
semantic functions to work effectively with forms and metadata and to implement statistics,
comment and blog functions (BlueSpice Social) as well as
professional support services.

By the way, this wiki runs on BlueSpice pro.

BlueSpice farm

Our wiki farm enables you to create and manage several wikis on one server. For example for internal information, departments and teams, product variants, other languages, projects or for archiving knowledge in deactivated wikis. The wiki farm is compatible with BlueSpice free as well as BlueSpice pro.

BlueSpice editions at a glance

The following table illustrates the differences between MediaWiki and the BlueSpice editions free, pro and farm:

	MediaWiki	BlueSpice free	BlueSpice pro	BlueSpice farm
Developer	Wikimedia foundation and MediaWiki community	Hallo Welt! GmbH and MediaWiki community
Open Source	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Target audience	Platform for Wikipedia and sister projects, as well as private individuals and smaller organizations	Company wiki for teams and smaller organizations	Enterprise wiki for medium-sized and large companies and organizations
Use case/s	Knowledge base Online encyclopedia	Knowledge base	Management system Documentation system Organizational manual Knowledge base
Visual editor	Plugin	Yes	Yes	Yes
Professional search	Plugin	Yes	Yes	Yes
Quality assurance	Nein	Plugin	Yes	Yes
Manuals	Plugin	Plugin	Yes	Yes
Data analysis / semantics	Plugin	Plugin	Yes	Yes
BlueSpice Social	No	No	Yes	Yes
Subwikis	No	Plugin	Plugin	Yes
Connections	Plugin	Central authentication Links to external files Working with external documents Connection to your enterprise search Connection of external data sources
Technical support	Community support	Community support	professional support (contingent) und community support
Complementary services	No	Installation, migration, updates Individual programming (customizing) Branding package Trainings and workshops
Technical provision	Self installation	Own server (on premise) External server (hosting) Virtual machine Docker
Flexibility	Within the scope of the given product	Step-by-step development of further enterprise functions by Hallo Welt! GmbH

Applications / Use Cases

Integrated management system (IMS)

An IMS serves the systematic and structured documentation of processes, structures, information and company knowledge. With BlueSpice, you combine individual management systems such as quality management, risk and compliance management in accordance with ISO certification standards to form a web-based system for holistic corporate management.

Documentation

With BlueSpice, you ensure that your employees professionally document business-critical information and quickly find it when needed. Typical applications are, for example, IT documentation, technical documentation or project and process documentation.

Organization and department manuals

In addition to the documentation of information at company level (goalsetting, strategy, structure and process organization), BlueSpice is ideally suited to document knowledge and information from individual departments and project teams (e. g. procurement manual, sales manual, IT emergency manual). Whatever you decide: With BlueSpice you are ready to bundle your corporate manuals under one central roof.

Flexible knowledge base

The effective management of company knowledge is a central competitive factor. With BlueSpice, knowledge- and information-based offers of all kinds can be realized for employees, customers, partners and other interest groups. In addition to the organization of team and department knowledge, this also includes online helpdesks, glossaries, FAQs and best practices or a knowledge base for public relations. With BlueSpice you experience knowledge management on a new level.

Functional overview

Content structuring

Link and organize knowledge like in Wikipedia

Whether classically structured or highly dynamic: BlueSpice is the software of choice to optimally manage your company knowledge. You work with exactly the same tools that have made Wikipedia unbeatable: categories, references and links, rooms for protected content, forwarding, templates and much more.

High performance search

Find information quickly and reliably

Search articles and file attachments (e.g. PDF and office documents) with a high performance fulltext and title search as well as a fuzzy search. Filtering the search results delivers fast and perfect results. You can also find your content by searching and browsing the metadata.

Visual editor

Create and edit appealing articles

Use a sophisticated WYSIWYG editor with numerous formatting options for texts and tables (headings, font styles, colors, etc.). Insert images quickly and easily using "Drag & Drop". Working with links and categories is as comfortable as inserting tags and checkboxes.

Dynamic content

Enrich your wiki pages with additional content

Upload image galleries or videos and create content straight in BlueSpice using image maps, tables, process diagrams (draw.io) or semantic data. Use widgets to embed content like podcasts, presentations or street maps. With APIs you can connect a Lotus Notes database or SharePoint document lists.

Document management

Direct access to office documents

Add Word, Excel or PDF documents to Wiki articles – multiple uploads, categorization and versioning included. With the appropriate server configuration, office documents can be sorted and edited directly in your Wiki. This is convenient, time-saving and improves productivity substantially.

Reporting

Trace changes to content in a targeted manner

BlueSpice provides the unique set of reporting and notification functions from Wikipedia. This allows you to track the latest changes in namespaces, categories, linked pages or user changes. You can also find content that has not been edited for a long time. Your dashboard keeps you informed at all times.

Export

Process wiki contents externally

With BlueSpice articles can be exported in numerous formats: DOCX, XML, HTML and PDF. The „export tables“ function is particularly helpful: Not only tables from articles, but also overviews from the Wiki administration can be converted into CSV or XLXS tables and further processed (e.g. the overview of user rights).

Administration

Manage user rights conveniently

BlueSpice makes the administration of your wiki child‘s play. You can set up users, namespaces, groups and rights using graphical interfaces and assign defined roles. As an administrator, you can also rename and merge accounts, copy articles or replace text parts in all articles.

Infrastructure and security

System integration and secure interfaces

„Under the hood“ BlueSpice offers important security functions. The connection to a central authentication system (LDAP /AD, SAML) is as self-evident as the provision of APIs. In general, the script language Lua opens up many design possibilities for developers, e.g. the automation of templates.

Personalization

Customizable user interfaces

The user page not only gives you access to your online profile, but also allows you to store notes. User settings help you to configure functions such as notification mails. And with the help of the dashboard and your personal navigation bar, you can get straight to the topics that are of particular interest for you.

Layout and design

Adaptation to your corporate design

We can adapt the user interface of BlueSpice to your corporate design according to your wishes. This is done by adapting the BlueSpice skin or by introducing your own individual skin. The quickest way to design your wiki is using the FlexiSkin function and adapt the logo, colors and backgrounds there.

Responsivity

Access your wiki from anywhere at any time

You can search, browse and edit articles with mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones. Or take a look at your latest notifications and stay up to date about the activities in your wiki.

The following functions are exclusively included in BlueSpice pro:

Quality assurance

Coordinate appraisals and approvals

Observe articles and get notified about changes. You can assign articles to specific editors or activate a review and approval mechanism. Further functions such as the resubmission of articles or the marking of an article as „obsolete“ complete the quality assurance.

Manuals

Easy to create and export

Combine individual articles from your Wiki and create manuals, documentations or instructions including navigation. Export your manuals and add file attachments, a clickable table of contents and a cover page in your individual corporate design.

Data analysis / semantics

Linking and reading structured data

BlueSpice pro supports the handling of metadata like no other wiki. Thanks to adaptable semantic forms, articles can be enriched with additional information like queries, diagrams and timelines. Typical metadata is, for example, the release date, the date of the last editing or information about the author.

Collaboration

Discuss revisions in a team

With BlueSpice pro you can discuss changes to an article, follow discussions and collect and evaluate ideas. In a central timeline, discussions are merged and become individually filterable. And in the wiki‘s internal blog employees learn about major revisions, campaigns and news from the author community.

About Us

Idea, history and present

BlueSpice is the result of a multitude of MediaWiki projects. It all started with the development of a corporate Wiki for IBM Germany in 2007. The project named bluepedia was initiated by Gunter Dueck. The complementary software components were initially distributed under the name HalloWiki Sunrise. In 2010, the "Hallo Welt! Medienwerkstatt" decided to publish their solution under the name BlueSpice for MediaWiki as free software. Today BlueSpice is a brand of Hello Welt! GmbH, a worldwide leading provider and consultant for MediaWiki solutions. With our growing team of over 20 employees, we serve over 200 national and international customers.

Business model

Our company finances itself by selling BlueSpice pro subscriptions. Various services complement our offer (installation, support, customizing, training ... ). In this way, we ensure that your wiki project is professionally planned and optimally implemented and supported after a successful start. In addition, Hallo Welt! GmbH supplies project customers to implement highly adapted and individually developed wiki solutions.

Sounds interesting? Let‘s wiki together!