Replace Microsoft Teams’ wiki tab with a OneNote notebook tab

The wiki tab that is added to every Team and each of its channels is convenient, but not robust and its content is not easily migrated and shared. I typically recommend new Team owners (or admins setting up new Teams) delete the ‘Wiki’ tab that comes with the Team and insert a new OneNote tab called ‘Notebook.’

Why replace the wiki with OneNote?

• OneNote has a dedicated app.
• Notebooks and Wikis are both stored in SharePoint (not Teams)
  • Notebooks can be moved, migrated, archived and accessed later more easily as a standalone OneNote file.
  • Wikis are folder structure document libraries in your site’s Site Contents folders. Individual sections are saved as .mht files. This can get messy reassembling and manipulating.
• OneNote is easily searchable and can have password protected areas. Try searching your wiki or restricting certain parts without creating a private channel.
• OneNote supports drawing/writing with styluses (styli?)
• OneNote supports audio/video
• OneNote integrates with Outlook
• There are more reasons, like how robust you can get with formatting text, but I think you get the picture.

Why you might keep the wiki

While I’m suggesting that OneNote be used for your Team’s note-taking, collaboration, and regular information sharing in a highly mobile and flexible medium, there is still a case to keep wiki alongside OneNote. Matt Wade suggests renaming the wiki tab to ‘About’ and using it as a reference/resource for the Team itself in his Definitive Guide to Everyday Etiquette in Microsoft Teams. So then you’ll have a simple ‘About’ tab for Team information and a ‘Notebook’ tab for ongoing collaboration and work.

How to replace wiki with OneNote

1. Use the dropdown menu for the Wiki tab and select Remove
   
2. Click the plus sign (+) to add a new tab and select OneNote for the tab.
3. Select the Notebook, and if for a channel other than general, perhaps a corresponding section in the Notebook. (I recommend mirroring your notebook’s sections to your Team’s channel structure)
   
4. Use the tab dropdown menu to rename the probably-very-long name to something simple like ‘Notebook’ for a cleaner user experience.
   

That’s it! Just a few steps and you’ve substantially increased the productivity potential and collaboration superpowers of your Team. You’ll want to repeat these steps for each new channel you create and, as mentioned, consider creating a new notebook section for each channel to keep things simple, organized, and easy to navigate.

Still aren’t convinced?

Bob Morris has done a very impressive and thorough job of comparing the two. His thoughts on the matter may help you decide whether wikis or notebooks are the best fit for your Team(s).