An OpenSource solution for internal documentation, that You can open to more contributors
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use BookStack to organize the knowledge base of our IT department in a logical, human understandable manner. User authenticates with their Active Directory account. Some books are open to everyone in the company, such as end-user manuals for most our internal information systems, FAQs and an official update journal of the IT department. Other books are available upon login, with granular access-management based on AD group memberships. My colleagues in IT organize support manuals, I publish methodologies, application infrastracture documentation and handbooks for external suppliers so that we reduce their prep time as well as time required from internal resources to instruct them. Once, we have run user acceptability tests in BookStack, detailing the steps in the software itself and embedding an assessment matrix form (from another service) in a floating overlay.
Pros
- Documentation
- Guides
- Knowledge-base
- Version control
Cons
- Continuity in backward compatibility
- Dark mode
- Absent tree view
Likelihood to Recommend
BookStack is fantastic for having business users and not-so-technically-savvy IT users. It enables them to create a documentation they like in a visual way while still forcing them to adhere to logical structure of a document. It works fine even for more technical matters such as integration guidelines, especially when these concern some of the more obscure technologies. The exported docs are presentable but lack any interactivity.
Where it lacks is generating heavily technical documentations. Heavier REST or GraphQL integrations should for example be documented through other means. As for developer documentations, there are definitely more suitable alternatives, also.
