XWiki Product Feedback

Here are some excerpts of what users have said while filling the XWiki Product Survey.

• Feedback from 2022
• Feedback from 2021
• Feedback from 2020 InformationThe survey was broken between October 2019 and April 2020
• Feedback from 2019 InformationThe survey was broken between October 2019 and April 2020
• Feedback from 2018
• Feedback from 2017
• Feedback from 2016
• Feedback from 2015 and older

• Sent 25.09.2023 13:09:17:

   a working "Realtime Collaborative Editor" (our developer could not succesfully integrate so far) default autosave better distinguished headings (text layout)
   Big thanks to erveryone for developing and keeping up XWiki! It's so useful to our project.

• Sent 09.08.2023 11:10:09:

   Text edition could be a little richer (like Office Word) and tables are not easy at all to be used

• Sent 28.07.2023 07:02:52:

   A) is it also possible to have docker instances for low-power computers like raspberry pi (arm / v7) I try to run services on as low power as possible. B) I still have a lot of content in twiki. However the twiki language support is quite slow. Is it also possible to convert to xwiki instead of stay on using twiki?
   Thanks for a great product. I use it every day for storing and organizing information als knowledge base and lookup. It is a great help.

• Sent 28.06.2023 14:41:17:

   Code Macro doesnt seem to use a mono-spaced font by default, which is ming boggling to me. Code macro seems to get confused and produce multiple disconnected short lines quite frequently. inserting one should be bullet proof. if it offers two styles, it should make you choose the style, or offer a way to change styles in its editor, it should not be trying to auto-choose for me, as that inevitably chooses poorly.
   all in all, a great, simple to setup wiki! well done!

  Answer from Vincent Massol (XWiki Core Dev):

   The code macro does use a monospace font by default.
   The code macro can work inline and standalone.

• Sent 09.06.2023 21:40:10:

   Improve documentation. I have been struggling with the error shown below for a long time and have not been able to find anything that shows how to fix it. "Unknown macro: notifications. Click on this message for details." , "The [notifications] macro is not in the list of registered macros. Verify the spelling or contact your administrator."
   Thanks for your hard work.

• Sent 11.05.2023 13:08:51:

   Ways to link to gitlab

• Sent 10.05.2023 18:36:03:

   1 - sometimes, a page/document IS an external document like a PDF or another file. In that case, users should only see the last version and the versioning of the page should be linked to versioning of the file.
   2 - copy control. In the cases users must print a page (to take to an offline worksite for example) it would be nice if the version was printed in it as well as some tag "controlled copy" so user knows it should check fi there is a new version once in a while. Maybe a Copy Control system, where every page printed results in a record of who printed, when and version. And it sends email to the person who printed it when new version is released, so he must destroy the old version copy.

• Sent 02.05.2023 13:59:46:

   I often use tables I would like to see improvements there, some of which include table sorting, table formatting for altering cells, and table headers.
   Windows plugins to display Excel and other office products with the ability to edit within the wiki.

  Answer from Vincent Massol (XWiki Core Dev):

   For Excel and other MS formats, you could use the OnlyOffice Extension.

• Sent 05.04.2023 19:47:04:

   Upgradeable from the admin interface.

• Sent 27.03.2023 10:14:20:

   Not yet. Great product. Hopefully, international language adaptation will do a better job
   Thanks to all the developers for their hard work. Great product.

• 23.03.2023 07:59:57:

   To improve: More easy to configure, better overview of deeper admin actions

• Sent 20.03.2023 13:55:02:

   I'm using the Docker version. Whenever there's an update, I find the upgrade wizard very confusing. Sometimes there are non-fatal errors. There are questions about plug-ins that I don't understand the consequences of. Generally, I don't like the upgrade experience.
   Even though I've got "remember me" checked on the login form, I still do get logged out from time-to-time. Then, the only way that I find out is when I go to edit a page and notice that the button is missing. I wish "remember me" would last forever and that if I was logged out that I would see a login page, instead of taking me to the wiki in read-only mode.

• Sent 10.03.2023 10:03:07:

   Since I'm new to XWIKI may be the feature exists, I haven't gone through all der extensions yet. Anyway here it is: Let me call it "compliance tracker" Acting as a knowledge base within a company, certain know-how articles are a must read for a certain group within the company. Let's say a warehouse operator of a chemical company need to read an instruction what to do in a chemical incident. The wiki can provide the know-how article, but is it possible to let the warehouse operator actively confirm, e.g. with a button, to confirm he has read the instructions. And second, to report, who in the group has already read the instructions and who has not. Another example would be an onboarding of a new employee. Thank you.
   I think it is a mature and very helpful pice of software and it was a lot of work. I'm glad about it exists ;-) Keep on doing such great effort! Thank You !!!

  Answer from Vincent Massol (XWiki Core Dev):

   There's no OOB extension that does this but it's quite easy to implement with XWiki (which is very extensible and made to implement this type of features). Please post on the XWiki forum and we shall be able to help you out by explaining how to implement it. If you don't have technical skills, you could contact one of the companies sponsoring the development of XWiki and sponsor the feature.
   EDIT: A forum post has been made!

• Sent 01.02.2023 on Twitter:

   @XWiki @xwikiorg It's been a while since I've frequented the room, but figured I would at least stop by real quick on here and let folks know -- XWiki is *still* the hill I will die on when it comes to Wiki software.  Nothing else compares.

• Sent 16.01.2023 07:26:26:

   To improve: Quality Management Tools for Approval of pages, Table Filter
  
   I was looking for a tool to replace Confluence, however the functionality seems not sufficient for our needs at the moment.

• Sent 06.09.2022 10:53:47:

   Better documentation regarding reverse proxy SSL configuration (nginx). Eventually found a posting that was a huge help in getting this configured and working, so fantastic to get this sorted
   Most applications default to a secure configuration, and would highly recommend that position with a class product like XWiki

• Sent 06.09.2022 07:46:25:

   Improve the separation of access rights. Improve the separation of access rights. When I added access rights separately to the page, the access rights to the page and child stopped working

• Sent 30.08.2022 13:22:53:

   To design a page it would be much more easier to work with areas like in confluence.
   The extension questions could be a little bit better. You and your team do a great work and we are very happy to use xwiki, thank you so much.

• Sent 11.08.2022 06:11:00:

   Inside the WYSIWYG editor, there is a "Replace" function, but unfortunately NOT in the "Source" code. In my documentation I implemented 32 links to the online help of one of our programs and our IT changed the server. Now I have to replace the server and path for my 32 links. But inside the source code I have to do it MANUALLY. Please implement the "Replace" function also in the editor
   We tested the "Office Importer" macro to import one of our training documents. The whole MS-Word document with 257 pages and 56MB size could NOT be imported. For testing I reduced the content to 116 pages and 21MB. This could be imported but with a bad result ! Also the performance is NOT acceptable. If I write text, it takes 1-3 seconds to see my result and it is not possible to switch to the "Source" code in an acceptable time. So, the "Office Importer" is NOT useful.

• Sent 28.07.2022 11:13:26:

   Try to support proxy out of the box, every company uses proxies, try to implement Markdown out of the box so you might not even need internet access.
   If you manage to install xwiki it will be one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life.

  Answer from Vincent Massol (XWiki Core Dev):

   It seems your life has been pretty simple so far, good for you!
   More seriously: proxies are supported out of the box and Markdown too (just that not everyone needs nor wants it which is why it's not installed by default).

• Sent 28.06.2022 11:47:51:

   Text-formating like colored text or striked thru text, background colors should be available in WYSIWYG-editor. Now you have to switch to sourcecode to modify.

  Answer from Vincent Massol (XWiki Core Dev):

   This is done voluntarily to focus on content and promote style consistency in the wiki. However it can be turned on.

• Sent 21.06.2022 11:12:23:

   How to set permissions to read-only? Restrict the content of others' articles
   Detailed instructions in Chinese

• Sent 31.05.2022 12:09:40:

   If xwiki can use less memory, and can run on machines like a raspberry pi 3B+, it'll have a brighter future, because some people who use it may want to run it on an energy-saving machine like a raspberry pi or a cheap but poor-performance VPS, etc.
   I think you can try to add a "lite flavor", it will not create an empty wiki, but only have basic wiki features, and administration tools. I also think you can try to add a "custom mode" when xwiki is installing, which will not only allow the webmasters to choose the features they want, instead of choose a flavor, but also let them can adjust the basic settings when xwiki is installing.
   P.S. I'm poor in English, if I made some mistakes like wrong grammer, please accept my "sorry" for that!

• Sent 28.04.2022 16:40:35:

   Documentation is a bit random and hard to follow at times, or even non existent (or maybe not findable by me). e.g. I was trying to find what the various fields when creating a themes for flamingo where. I gave up.

• Sent 04.04.2022 19:44:17:

   Oh, the syntax .... it's taken me a while to work out how to reference headings and anchors but I have got there. I've used Markdown and even nroff in the past, so I'm generally familiar with the non-WYSIWYG interface (and actually prefer it). I have looked all over for proper worked examples, but all I saw was a repeat of the syntax guide already on wiki.org. I'd really welcome a page or series of pages with worked examples so we can see how this is done. I'd even be happy to help build this.
   I'm using xwiki because a lot of our data is linked in multiple dimensions, so getting reports of how information is linked is actually more important than the information itself, in some circumstances. I'm hoping to be able to create dashboards based on the linkages. Let's see how far we get.

• Sent 04.04.2022 20:40:47:

   Better support for multi-language. The Blog is not working in multiple languages, and the translation/maintenance of multi-language sites is not very user-friendly.

• Sent 31.03.2022 11:08:18:

   Implement a access rights information section (e.g. in page header, cf. Confluence) that informs users whether page/subpages are restricted or not. Imrove the Like functionality: Let users see at first glance who liked a page Implement a gadget for a dynamic list of most popular pages/comments etc. (cf. Confluence) based on clicks, interactions and likes over time
   I greatly appreciate this gorgeous piece of software!

• Sent 11.03.2022 09:32:14:

   XWIKI is very good as a collaborative documentation environment, it is more flexible and feature rich than Atlassian Confluence. But for a full replacement for Confluence, a very important functionality is still missing – customizable export by templates to PDF and DOCX / ODT formats. This feature is very important for documentation, because it allows you to automatically generate stylized documents from wiki articles. This is very important, as it allows the technical writing team to concentrate on the documents and not waste time on designing the appearance of documents for the customer. There are great add-ons for Confluence: - Scroll Word Exporter - Scroll PDF Exporter. This extensions allow you to fully customize the conversion of wiki articles from Confluence to DOCX and PDF formats. The Scroll Word Exporter extension allows you to load templates with styles created in MS Word and use them when converting to fully control the style of documents. It works amazing! In addition, there is an additional Scroll Exporter extension that allows you to flexibly customize the export for article fragments. And it's very helpful! If XWIKI has functionality like the Scroll Word/PDF Exporter, it will be a super feature for documentation and will allow many companies to completely transfer documentation from Confluence to the wonderful XWIKI!

• Sent 22.02.2022 16:40:35:

   collapsible text boxes somewhat easier interface customization (e.g. font sizes in navigation and menu panels) installer can be confusing, especially when using the distribution wizard

• Sent 03.02.2022 01:50:49:

   Quite honestly, I particularly like the Confluence product and am only moving away because I cannot put sensitive documentation in a cloud hosted solution. I would suggest using their product and take inspiration from what they do well to enhance your product. eg: -Be more windows friendly, most businesses use windows servers, and the setup process on windows is arduous. Consider packaging the setup into a full stack all-in-one installer and you would have more people complete a proof of concept they can take to sign off -simple things like the sections option in confluence is very useful to have built into the editor -have a non-dev/non-expert user review documentation for xWiki, for example, setting up templates (https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Help/Templates/), useful function but when setting it up, the "template to use" field was not obvious that it was just a normal page that can be used as the template, and then you search for xwiki create a template you get the same help page that does not describe what the "template to use" actually is (alternatively you could name that field, "Page to use as template")