TiddlyWiki on SharePoint - Real world Application

[TonyM]

Folks,

I thought I would just share something with you that may encourage some of you.

• I have a Consultancy contract with a Client for whom I believe TiddlyWiki could provide a very good solution.
• They have asked me to proceed. 
• It is exciting because this is the first time I will be paid to develop a Tiddlywiki
• I have explored and confirmed I can deliver this on top of SharePoint in Office 365

Here are some basic details of my approach

• Single File Tiddlywiki in a SitePages Library
• It loads very quickly
• Check out the Wiki file to the administrator, no one else can save over it - Serial editors only
• Only the administrator who has it checked out can save back to the library
• The Wiki can be opened with the "#tiddler" in the URL so links to the wiki will have the desired landing tiddler for different users
• I will place links to the wiki for different purposes in different places Like, Lookup, Check personal details, administer etc...

Minor limitations

• Autosave will trigger errors if another change triggers a subsequent save before the first has completed (takes a few minutes in background)
• One editor at a time, serial editors only, Ok for this business case.

I still have a few challenges, 

• One will be to ensure users without save privileges do not try and save, and avoid throwing an error.
• Perhaps this will be reversed, no one can save, the admin will open a special way that engages saving
• Another will be for a separate wiki as a Form, whose tiddlers can be imported into the main wiki
• It would be nice if the viewer access could indicate when an update has being saved under it and suggest a reload.

I plan some special features which I will share if there is an interest, Indicated by your response in this thread.

• Lists with selectable columns, sort and (Drop down) filters
• Generate PDF documents from templates
• Generate CSV Exports of data for distribution by excel
• Generate curated TiddlyWiki's for placement on client Intranet
• Lists that detect they have being "abridged" with updated data
• All the new item templates, forms, lists and reports you would expect of a database application and front end.
• Possible integration with other systems.

Of course I am confident I can do this or I would not have commited, yet I may need to seek support of the community, but rest assured I will give back in greater measure.

Regards

Tony

[tony]

Congratulations Tony on the contract and promoting TiddlyWiki adoption with your Sharepoint expertise :-)

.aspx is surprisingly workable on OD 365 with all the cloud frosting of access and version control.

I find saving slower than local html, though.

And asset link sharing can also be a cosmetic drag with those long hashy urls.

Nevertheless, I look forward to your development progress and other things you discover!

Best,

tony

[CHUN LI]

Good news Tony! And looking forward to see TW in SharePoint! 

Chun

[TonyM]

Tony,

I suppose nothing is faster than local html but have you tried placing a renameed tiddlywiki.html as tiddlywiki.aspx in a wikipages library or sitepages library?, because o365 seem to favor these files and are quite fast.

Regards
Tony

[TonyM]

Tony,

Remember a link shortner can help, especialy if you can host your own, and use user friendly names.

Regards
Samename

[barro...@gmail.com]

Congratz.  The challenge looks daunting but you got it all laid out which is a very good start.  Planning is essential.  Serial edditing is the way to go IMO with collaborate work for user s' sanity.

[Geoff Tothill]

Hi Tony,

I wondered how you were getting on with this project. I also had a need to use tiddlywiki on a corporate (read Office 365) SharePoint server and find in its current iteration it works pretty well.

Im using stand alone tiddlywiki files renamed as .aspx and these launch in a full frame rather than being wrapped in SharePoints controls.

I occasionally get a XMLHTTP 500 error on save, which is annoying. I wondered if you had seen the same thing?  I wonder if it may be due to conflicting saves?

Regarding your list of possible enhancements I would be really interested to see how you are progressing with these - especially embedded forms solutions.

Hope it is going well.  This really is a very pervasive use of tiddlywiki on SharePoint in a corporate environment.  Versioning on SharePoint also makes it very robust.

All the best,

Geoff.