When working with a large team, there is one inevitable need — document management. As the habits of office workers has slowly but inexorably changed in recent years, wikis have become a popular type of tool to manage the documentation needed by a team. With the ability to work together and share responsibility with any particular document, wikis have made document creation easier to do with less meetings.

And when it comes to well designed, yet simplistic wiki-based web applications, you need look no further than cctext.

cctext was mentioned briefly in a recent round up of wiki web apps. But it deserved a closer look. Amongst all the tools listed in the aforementioned article, cctext has the nice, clean look that gets my attention. When you see that, you suspect that the good design is more than skin deep.

And the next logical step is take some time to see if the beauty is on the inside too. Here’s what I found.

Dashboard

To start off, the overall look is … clean. It’s not overly flashy like some modern web applications, but neither does it look pedestrian. With subtle good looks and a logical layout, the overall feeling is one of order and cleanliness.

The good design starts on the Home page.

This feeling starts at the Dashboard or Home page. This is where you get the directory or recent activity in the main section of the page. And all your options are available in a nicely designed sidebar.

The directory style listing is sorted by most recent activity and makes use of coloured labels to distinguish between your different workspaces. It’s similar to the dashboard in Basecamp and so should be familiar to many users.

Sidebar

Nice, logical options are clear and concise.

The sidebar is a great feature of this application. It’s basically contextual menu, giving the user different options depending on which area of the application you are currently working in. Where as the menu bar at the top of the appliction is static, the sidebar changes to meet your needs.

Or, you can compact the available options.

As well, the various sections of the sidebar can be collapsed or expanded. This adds to the clean aspect of the design.

Workspaces

The Workspaces are the backbone of the application. This is the higher level categories with which you will organize your work and documentation.

Manage all your created Workspaces.

The app itself gives a great explanation of what the workspaces are intended to be used for:

Workspaces are where you store Topics and files. Every workspace has a owner. If you want to join a workspace, you must contact the owner to add you. You can create your own workspace.

If you have various areas or responsibilities or regular processes to manage, you would break them down via Workspaces.

Topics

Further, each Workspace can contain multiple Topics. This is where you’ll start to build pages for your work and share files.

Again, the main section of the page (on the left) is where your content will go, while the sidebar allows you to work with your content and view its metadata. Items such as who contributed to a Topic, what attachments are included, and Topic history are clearly labelled and easily available.

Uploaded files are viewable BEFORE a download.

And the application also gives some good options for viewing uploaded files. Rather than simply upload the file and make it available for download, their is a Quick Look option within the app that allows you to preview the file in question.

Formatting

For Markup beginners.

Editing the content in any topic or workspace is achieved using the very friendly Markup language. Many web savvy folks are used to this particular shorthand. But for those who are not, the sidebar includes a nice overview of the more commonly used aspects of Markup.

As well, when editing a Topic or Workspace, their is also a RTE (rich text editor) style toolbar at the top. But when you use a button on the toolbar, rather than visually alter the text, it simply inserts the correct Markup characters to give you the desired format when saving. I like this approach — it will definitely help users get accustomed to the Markup language.

Watchlist

As I mentioned above, you have the ability to set a flag on any Topic so that you are updated of any changes. The Watchlist — accessible from the home page — is where you view your watched Topics from various Workspaces.

Get notified of the items that matter most to you.

This is a nice way to filter out the items that are really important to you at any time, especially if you manage a larger team.

Multiple Users

Of course, a true wiki tool has to include the ability to collaborate. cctext does this well — simply add as many users as you like from the home page. All the aspects of a collaborative tool then apply: who contributed to what, who uploaded what files etc.

Easy control over who member permissions is a pleasure.

For corporate users who have experience with Sharepoint, a tool like cctext would be fairly familiar. But unlike the poor aesthetics and clunky interface the Microsoft offering, cctext is a smoother tool with its cleaner layout. If you’ve ever had to mess around with multiple layers of user permissions in Sharepoint, I think you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Pricing

The pricing for this app is slightly different from your typical application. It’s simple — for every user you have set up to access the app, you pay $4 per month.

A team of ten will pay $40 per month, a team of 100 will pay $400, a team of … you get the idea. And you first ten users months (UM) are free.

Slick for a Beta

When you add it all up, cctext is a great application. And for users who work heavily with Google Apps, cctext offers integration as well.

For the cost, cctext is a bargain at its price. To have your team working together efficiently, $4 a month for each user is a no brainer. Check it out today.