Knowledge base software recommendations, open source or not

Question

I'm looking to start evaluating a KB system. At this time, I don't want to go with Sharepoint. However, we are a Microsoft shop, so I would prefer to use something that uses SQL on the back end. Must be a web based solution as well. What I would really like is something that uses a similar format to the Microsoft KB. IE: Symptoms, Cause, Resolution, Workaround, etc.

I've worked with a couple helpdesk solutions that claim to have a KB built in, but it ends up being a glorified ticket archive system, and just doesn't look good. Open source would be best, as we can customize it ourselves (software dev house), but paid solutions are also on the table as well. The projected usage isn't any more than a couple hundred users right now.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this provides the helpdesk features you want, but Atlassian has some cool bugtracking/wiki products (not free) that might work for you: http://www.atlassian.com/

Answer 2

The Microsoft Dynamics product line has ticket management & knowledge base functionality.
I'm not recommending it personally (the only deployment I ever saw was very nice, but required a 3-man team working full-time to keep it going), but if you're an MS shop it should at least be on your list to examine. The product is very flexible and can be customized extensively (though customizations are part of why it took a 3-man team to keep that installation running)

Other options to consider include Trac (though this may not be quite what you want, and I don't believe it supports SQL Server as a back end) and RT (getting that running on Windows would likely be painful).

Answer 3

Ended up going with Sharepoint. Found a nifty template that had more functionality and better looks than nearly all products out there.