Review: JotSpot 2.0

For years now, wikis -- shared Web pages where groups of people can gather and update information, archive documents and messages, and otherwise collaborate -- have been touted as the next great workplace tool. Unlike most corporate intranets, wikis can be updated by anyone who's granted permission, and built-in revision tracking makes it easy to roll pages back to a previous version if errors are introduced.

So why aren't we all using wikis? One big reason is the geek factor. Because of their open-source roots, many wikis don't have the sleek interfaces, not to mention the bells and whistles, that most of us are accustomed to seeing in our software.

With the release of the 2.0 version of its wiki software, JotSpot has set about to change that. According to a company press release, JotSpot 2.0 "eliminates the complexity and nerdiness of wikis" by behaving in a way that average computer users are familiar with -- namely, like Microsoft Office. The new wiki offers a series of templates for creating different types of Web pages, including shared calendars, spreadsheets, photo pages, and file cabinets for archiving any kind of document. You can also import files you've created in Microsoft Word or Excel as pages in your wiki.

JotSpot 2.0 is a hosted service, in which your wiki is housed on JotSpot's servers. The company offers several pricing levels, ranging from the free Personal Plan, which gives you 10 pages and allows you to share your wiki with up to five users, to the $200-per-month Company Plan, which gives you 5,000 pages and unlimited users. (A version called JotSpot Wiki Server that lets you host the wiki on your own servers behind your firewall is in beta testing; pricing is still being determined but is likely to start at $100 a month for 25 users.)

Up And Running
Since I'm always in search of better methods of sharing information with my co-workers, I decided to give the hosted service a whirl. Signing up took just moments: I chose a jot.com address (as in http://yourwiki.jot.com), entered some basic contact information, and opted for the Personal Plan. The first time I tried this, the server hung for quite some time, but that's likely because of my timing: I signed up immediately after JotSpot 2.0 was announced, and I suspect I was part of a stampede of curious users all trying to test out the service simultaneously. When I signed up for a second account a week or so later, everything went without a hitch.

Interestingly, right after my first signup attempt I received not one, but two notes from customer service reps saying, "There was a slight glitch at the time you requested your account. As a result, your account was not provisioned." I found it amusing that a company striving to make its product less nerdy would choose such language (I still don't know what "provisioned" means), but I appreciated their quick communication. The reps assured me that they were working on a fix and would contact me when the problem was resolved. I never heard from them again, though I did receive a generic JotSpot e-mail welcoming me to my new wiki.

In the meantime, I had already gone to my wiki's address and begun playing around with it. I initially encountered a few bugs (such as comments I added to pages not being saved) and cryptically worded error messages, but these problems resolved themselves over the next few days, and soon I was wiki-ing smoothly.

Building The Beast
JotSpot has done everything in its power to give new users the information they need to create their wikis. The "Welcome to JotSpot" e-mail new users receive points them to a video tutorial, and when users go to their wiki for the first time they are encouraged to sign up for a free Webinar. There's also extensive user documentation, a FAQ, and a searchable knowledge base.

Like most users, I ignored these attempts to teach me the right way to do things and started banging around on my own. Obviously anticipating this, JotSpot inserted giant orange "Create new page" and "Edit this page" markers on the wiki's home page. Using the "edit page" button and the WYSIWYG interface -- which did indeed work much like a limited version of Microsoft Word -- I quickly typed in some headers and text for my home page, which would eventually serve as the doorway to the other pages in the wiki.

Creating new wiki pages was just as easy: I simply named the page; chose the type of page; and then, depending on the page type, added text to Web pages, inserted data into spreadsheet pages, added events to calendars, uploaded documents to file cabinet areas, or uploaded images to photo albums.

Once I had created several pages, I went back to the home page and created links to them using the handy-dandy "make link" button. (This button also lets you link to outside Web pages and any files you've uploaded to the wiki.) All this was accomplished without my doing a lick of HTML coding -- though you can edit in HTML if that's your preference.

I invited a few co-workers to join, and they were able to make changes to existing pages, add new pages, and otherwise enjoy the privileges of wiki membership -- at least, those that I allowed them. As the wiki's administrator, I control whether pages can be viewed and edited by anyone, by all registered users of the wiki, by select users I designate, or only by me. I can set these permissions for the whole wiki or for individual pages.

Beyond The Basics
Where JotSpot 2.0 really gets interesting is in the additional applications it makes available as plug-ins. You can pick and choose from a project manager, a bug reporter, a knowledge base app, a recruiting tool, a call log manager, a blog, a simple polling tool, personal to-do lists, and more. I tried out the knowledge base app and the poll tool.

Creating a knowledge base, then adding articles (i.e., questions and answers) to it was as easy as pointing, clicking, and typing. The only tricky part was deciding which tags, or keywords, to add to each article, and which articles to include in the Frequently Asked Questions list. Within a few minutes I had a completely searchable database of information on my chosen topic, as well as a FAQ highlighting the most important questions and answers in my knowledge base. As with other wiki pages, the administrator can designate which users are allowed to add to and edit the knowledge base.

Once again, the polling tool made it quick and easy to create polls, but I found the implementation of the polls I'd created a bit clumsy. Instead of seeing the answer choices below a poll question, users must click the "Vote" link, then choose their answer from a drop-down list, then click "Save." It just feels like a step or two too many.

Nevertheless, it's fun to try out the different apps that are available. You may find some to be genuinely useful, while others aren't worth your while -- but it's certainly nice to be able to experiment with them at no additional cost.

Flies In The Ointment
While it's nice of JotSpot to offer a free account, the Personal Plan isn't all that useful. I rapidly bumped my head against the plan's 10-page limit and found myself having to rethink the pages I'd created, combining separate pages and deleting others to make room for new pages I wanted to create. (With five different users trying to create pages, this could quickly turn chaotic.)

My page-limit problem wasn't helped by the fact that initially every calendar event I created was counted as one of my 10 pages. This seems to have been a bug, however, because at some point during my testing, new events stopped increasing my page count.

To make testing easier, JotSpot upgraded my account to the top-tier Company Plan, but the rest of you will have to shell out if you want more pages. That said, the Mini Plan allows you 100 pages and 10 users for $10 a month, which seems reasonable. Paid plans also get you basic support, higher storage limits, and the ability to customize the wiki's design.

It should also be noted that certain JotSpot features work better than others. Not surprisingly, the functions that work best are what wikis have always been used for: building basic Web pages and archiving documents. Importing Word documents into Web pages (rather than simply attaching and archiving them) works smoothly as well. The photo albums, on the other hand, are a bit clunky. For example, there's no way to upload images in a batch, and while you can enter captions for the images, those captions don't appear in either thumbnail or slideshow view.

The spreadsheet pages go beyond clunky and into buggy territory. Although I never lost any data, spreadsheets that I imported from Excel lost their formatting, and even after I painstakingly restored that formatting using the wiki's WYSIWYG tools, it was sometimes missing again on subsequent visits to those pages. Rather than wasting any more time with these pages, I found it more useful to store Excel files in a file cabinet page and have people download, edit, and re-upload them there.

The calendar pages are the worst of the bunch, lacking even basic features such as the ability to invite others to an event and have them respond with a yes or no. The calendars also just feel kludgy. For instance, if you have more than one event on the same day, they appear in the order you created them rather than by time of day. And in order to create a recurring meeting, you first have to create the meeting in the "Add New Event" screen and then, once it appears in the calendar, double-click the event to get to the "Edit Event" screen, which has additional options such as adding a location for the meeting or turning it into a recurring event. Why not just give users those options in the first screen?

Likewise, standard wiki functions like tracking changes and rolling back to previous versions work very well on basic Web pages (just click the "Show version history" link at the top of the page) but are awkward and hard to find on these special page types.

The Bottom Line
So has JotSpot achieved its goal of building a less nerdy wiki? In many ways, yes. It is remarkably easy to set up an account and build a wiki with no knowledge of HTML or other Web languages. It could be an inexpensive solution for sharing documents within a workgroup or even with an outside client.

Don't waste your time with the photo, spreadsheet, or calendar pages, though. There are far better free online apps in all three categories -- you'd be much better served by using those and linking to them from your JotSpot home page.

Even without these special page types, JotSpot 2.0 is a reasonably priced way for non-technical folks to set up a shared workarea with a minimum of fuss. The ability to integrate additional collaborative apps such as a knowledge base or a bug reporter at no additional cost is icing on the cake.

Editor's Note: For advice on implementing wikis in the workplace, see the story Wikis At Work.