Dokit
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Dokit is a Semantic MediaWiki based platform for creating, publishing, sharing visual step-by-step instructions and user guides.
Dokit aims to be a powerful tool for companies who needs to implement standard procedures and share product manuals. It enables companies to share their digital documentation within and outside the organization in order to facilitate the transmission of knowledge.
Need[edit]
Traditional product manuals are often hard to read and understand. They also tend to be poorly visual, quickly outdated and not optimized for mobile devices. Dokit developed a Semantic MediaWiki based platform in order to fix this issue.
Solution[edit]
The Dokit team decided to leverage both the Semantic MediaWiki software and the Page Forms extension to enable users to create step-by-step user guides in an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
Our team developed the first version of extension "VEForAll" (MediaWiki.org) (which has since been taken over and improved by the SMW community) in order to incorporate the VisualEditor interface into the textareas for user editing.
Using the semantic queries, Dokit developed a visual content explorer with a bunch of metadata filters.
Features of the platform[edit]
- Guides and manuals creation: Add steps, import files and insert images or videos in a few clicks.
- PDF Export: Combine your guides into a digital manual and export the full manual in PDF format.
- Multilingual: Translate all the content and create multilingual versions of your guides.
- Image annotation: Easily edit and annotate your images to highlight useful details to the readers.
- Approval Processes: Require your experts to review and approve any changes or updates made to specific guides.
- Category management: organize your content into categories and sub-categories.
Usage of Semantic MediaWiki[edit]
The Dokit platform makes extensive use of Semantic MediaWiki to structure pages, enrich them with relevant properties (difficulty, duration, versions, etc.) and establish connections between related contents: linking step-by-step guides to its prerequisites (parts, tools, files and safety rules) required to perform a task. Dokit also leverage extension "Semantic Extra Special Properties"Adds some extra special properties to all pages to query extra properties such as number of views, page creator, translation and review status.
On the user side, we use extension "Page Forms"Allows to create and use forms for adding and editing pages with and without semantic data which allows us to standardize forms and enable anyone to write a step-by-step guides in a few minutes, even without wiki markup language skills.
With regards to discussions on the platform, we have recently moved from extensions StructuredDiscussions (formerly Flow) to extension "CommentStreams" (MediaWiki.org), a commenting system for MediaWiki that uses the possibilities of Semantic MediaWiki. CommentStreams provides user-configurable properties to set an avatar and display name for a user as well as special properties that can be queried on each comment to provide the comment title, a link to the page to which the comment refers, and a link to the head comment if the comment is a reply. We have extended the extension and developed a page that brings all the discussions together in one place. With this feature, users can have an instant overview of all discussions, questions and comments posted on the platform.
Distributions[edit]
- Free: Download the open source version of Dokit Community on Github
- Starter: The turnkey edition for small businesses
- Enterprise: Manage and distribute your documentation on a large scale
- Tailor-made : A platform adapted to specific needs
Future plans[edit]
- Elastic search integration
- Mobile Application: using the SemanticJsonExport extension (an extension developed by Dokit which aims to export the semantic data of a wiki page in JSON format), we are currently developing a mobile application to browse and display the content on mobile.
- We are currently releasing an extension, based on SMW properties, that allows a user to manage multiple versions of the same page. Many of our users maintain different versions of their technical documentation for different versions of their products. Each content on Dokit (pages, tutorials, manuals) will be enriched with versioning information that allow users to easily switch between different versions of a content.
Behind the scenes[edit]
The Dokit adventure began in 2016 with the launch of the project Wikifab, born from the will to spread know-hows and allow anyone to make, create or repair anything.
Today, the Dokit platform is used by organizations from a variety of industries, such as Aero and defense, Automotive, Data Center, Industry, Energy, Construction, Environmental, and Education.
Special Thanks[edit]
We would very much like to thank the Semantic MediaWiki developers who made this project possible. And also Yaron Koren, for the work he has done with the Page Forms extension and the quality of its support.
More information on the Dokit website.
