The concept of a name space is central to wikis. Each page in a wiki has a unique name, allowing you to link to that specific page by its page name (which generally is also the page title). Traction TeamPage delivers the ease and power of Named Pages without the constraints for less formal use cases that don't require it. TeamPage also offers a Global Name Space (that spans all wiki projects) and allows you to Alias Page Names across projects.
This article discusses Page Name concepts and how to add Page Names to articles. For information on the GUI or syntax required to make links, see Linking to Named Pages.
Named Pages - Name When You Want To, Not Because You Have To
Page Names are useful when making a "Forward Link" by page name to pages which do not exist yet (a fast way to built out a document or site) or when you want to assign a page name to a knowledge asset (like an encyclopedia name) that should have unique name.
For example, in the HR wiki, there should only be one article with the page name Pension Plan. This way, if anyone writes a link to that page name (using the link by name feature of the link tool, or by using wiki syntax "[[Pension Plan]]"), the link will go to the correct Pension Plan article. You can setup the HR project to force all articles to have a page name, or you can relax that constraint which could allow someone to haphazardly post questions, status reports or other types of content that has the title Pension Plan, but not the page name.
For less structured cases like writing status reports and meeting notes, asking questions or raising issues, assigning a Page Name to an article (and being mindful of what might be "good" name) is not necessary or helpful. But, in that context, using page names for forward links or to create a subset of "wiki" content that is assigned page names can be very useful.
In Traction TeamPage, the project administrator can enforce the use of unique Page Names in each project, or can make Page Names optional. You can see the checkbox that lets you toggle whether to give this article a name in the Edit dialog:
Assign additional Page Names, from other Wiki Projects or the Global Name Space
The Add Names dialog (which changes to Edit Names when at least one name exists) allows you to assign several equivalent Names to a given Article. You can assign names from the project where the article is published, from other projects, or even from the Global Name Space.
In the example below, the name Pension Program for Employees is the Page Name in the HR project where the article is published. However, the same content can be referenced by page name Pension Program in the Global Name Space and using the name Executive Pension Plan in the ExecutiveTeam project.
When posted (see below) this article shows the content and policy label followed by a comment form, an attached presentation file, and a list (highlighted) of incoming links and page names assigned to this article.
Note that the incoming link from the article titled Executive Perks is using the Page Name Alias assigned from the ExecutiveTeam Project. Because of Traction's security model, Individuals without permission to see the ExecutiveTeam project would not see this incoming link.
When to Use Global Page Names
Page names are meta-data which belong to a given project. Therefore, the ability to have knowledge of or use the page names in each project also depends on whether you can read and author in that project.
By contrast, the Global name space is available to all users in all projects. It can be used as a single, most authoritative page name overlay across all projects.
Imagine a case where you created three different articles with the page name Revenue Recognition in each of the Sales, Marketing and Executive Team projects. To make matters more interesting, the Accounting project has 3 different articles posted over 8 years - all titled Revenue Recognition. You may want to assign the Global page name "Revenue Recognition" to the article in the Sales project to call it out as the most authoritative version of the definition.
Page Name History - Fearless Refactoring
As your wiki changes and grows over time, Pages are renamed, Page Names are moved from Article to Article, New Pages are requested, Page Names are Removed, and some Page Names are orphaned. The content of a single page can be split into multiple pages to make the subject easier to read, or many pages with very similar content may be combined under a more general name - this process is often called refactoring. It may happen very gradually, or in big sweeps.
In traditional wiki's it can be very difficult to keep track of what happens when pages are renamed, split or combined - and it often requires a sequence of manual actions to insure that old by-name links point to the right pages after refactoring. Additionally, a user may run into problems when visiting a page titled "Bug," only to discover it is about a car when it used to be about an insect! The Page name Bug may have been dropped and then reassigned - but there is typically no way find out what happened or follow a link trail to the page now named Insect.
Traction's Audit Trail makes it simple to review page name history as well as typical page content history. It can help users follow a trail to the page they expected (following the trail from Bug to Insect) and it can help "wiki gardeners" monitor and manage an actively evolving wiki.
One example of Traction's audit trail is a unique feature that allows you to display and explore Page Name History. As Page Names are assigned, changed and re-assigned, you can follow the history trail to see what happened.
In the example of the article shown below, you can see the Name history along with the article edit history and label history. The Name history and its timeline show that three names were added to the page.
The example also shows that (at 3:13PM) the name "Pension Program for Employees" was Renamed to "Employee Pension Program." As a result of that change, the Page Name "Pension Program for Employees" is now free to be used elsewhere, and all links to this Article will now show the new Page Name "Employee Pension Program."
Managing and Monitoring your Wiki Named Pages
Wiki and Named Page related sections (see Sections Overview) in Traction make it easy for any user to see what's going on, and will satisfy the frustrations of any "Wiki Gardener" familiar with the work of monitoring and managing a wiki. The following section types are available to help manage Named Pages and other Wiki activity:
Recent Edits: Monitor article and comment editing. You can even scope this view down to only monitor important pages that, perhaps, are tagged with a Requirement label or written by a given author.
New Pages: Lists all articles that have a newly assigned Page Name.
Requested Pages: When users make forward links to pages that don't yet exist, this section lists the requested pages.
Renamed Pages: Lists all articles where the Page Name assigned to it is changed to another Page Name
Removed Pages: Lists Page Names that were assigned to an article, and later removed.
Orphaned Pages: Lists Pages that were a target of at least one Page Name link, but are no longer linked to as a result of an edit.
Here's an example with three sections on a Front Page showing new named pages, requested pages and orphaned pages:
Interaction with the Publish/Draft Moderation Feature
If you have activated Draft/Publish support for Page and Comment Moderation and you are also using page names, you will be glad to know that the page name model works in conjunction with the moderation model and the permission implications. For example, a forward link from a draft article is shown as a draft link, in grey, within a Requested Page Names section. As a result, if you can't read draft then you can't know that the page name is being requested.
