Guide
This guide shows you how to build a structured, maintainable company wiki using Fibery databases. By the end, you'll have a wiki with organized navigation, access controls, and enough flexibility to grow with your team.
Before you start: You need a Fibery space where you have Editor or Admin access.
What you're building
The wiki will consist of two databases: Category and Document, connected to each other. Categories are your top-level groupings (Policies, Engineering, HR - whatever makes sense for your team). Documents live inside them. The left menu navigation comes from a Smart Folder that groups documents by category, so it looks and feels like a familiar folder tree - but with filters, so archived or draft content stays out of the way automatically. Permissions are set at the database level, with individual documents automatically shared with their owners.
Step 1: Create the wiki databases
1. Open your space and click + Add → Database. Name it Document.
2. Create a second database. Name it Category.
3. Connect the two: open the Document database settings → Relations → add a relation to Category. Set it as many-to-many (a document can belong to multiple categories, a category can hold many documents).
Your categories will be broad groupings - Policies, Guidelines, Engineering, HR. Your documents will be specific pieces of content within those categories.
Nested documents with self-relations
If your documents have a natural hierarchy - a top-level Document that contains several sub-articles, for example - you can make the Document database reference itself.
Open the Document database settings → Relations → add a relation back to Document. Name it "Parent document" on one side and "Sub-documents" on the other. Set it as many-to-one (a document has one parent, a parent can have many children).
Step 2: Set up Document fields
Add the following fields to the Document database:
Rich Text — name it "Content". This is where the actual document text lives. Or use default Description field.
Workflow — add states: Idea, Draft, Review, Published, Archived. Set Draft as the default.
Single User — name it "Owner". If in your case Owner = Created by, you can skip this one.
Date — name it "Published on".
Date — name it "Archived on".
Enable Files and Comments on the Document database so people can attach supporting files and discuss content inline.
Start with these. You can add more fields later - don't over-engineer it upfront.
Step 3: Make categories emojified (optional)
Open the Category database and assign an icon to each category record. Pick something meaningful - a 🔒 for Security, ✈️ for Travel guidelines. This makes the left menu scannable at a glance and more fun.
Step 4: Set up the left menu with Smart Folders
Click + in the left sidebar → Smart Folder.
Set the Smart Folder to show records from the Document database.
Set Category as the top-level grouping. Each category now appears as a folder in the left menu.
Add a filter: Status is not Archived. Archived documents stay in the database but disappear from navigation.
You now have two options for what appears under each category:
Option A - Documents directly: Documents appear as individual items under each category folder. Best for smaller wikis with a simple structure.
Option B - Context views: Each category gets its own Table (or List) view showing only its documents. Better for larger wikis where you want sorting, filtering, and custom columns per category. To set this up: navigate to any Category record, click +, choose Table, set the database level to Document. Then mirror this view to all other categories.
If you added self-relations to the Document database, update your Smart Folder to group or nest by Parent document. Sub-documents will appear indented under their parent in the left menu, giving you a proper document tree.
Step 5: Set up Permissions
Open the Space settings → Permissions. Set the default access level to Viewer for all members. Everyone can read; not everyone should edit.
Add a People field to the Document database — name it Editors.
Open the field settings → Sharing → set it to grant Editor access. Now, whoever is assigned to a document through this field automatically gets editing rights for that document only.
If you want some users to be able to create new documents but not edit others by default: share the Document database with those users using the Submitter access template, then set up automatic sharing via the Created By field — see Automatically Share Entities with Assigned People
If your team uses Group permissions, you can also control access at the category level — see User Groups
Step 6: Make the Wiki discoverable across spaces
In any other space that needs access to specific documents (e.g. the HR space needs Policies), click + in that space's left sidebar → Smart Folder. Set it to show records from the Document database with a filter: Category is Policies (or whatever is relevant to that space).
Each space gets a curated view of only the documents it needs - without duplicating anything.
Step 7: Search
Fibery's standard search covers document names, rich text content, and comments. No setup needed — it works out of the box.
For semantic search (finding documents by meaning, not just keywords): enable AI Search in space settings → AI → Semantic Search. See Semantic Search (AI Search) for details.
Optional extras
Once the basics are running, these are worth adding:
Automation: set dates automatically. When a document moves to Published, set the "Published on" date automatically. When it moves to Archived, set "Archived on" the same way. To do this, create two automations - one triggered by state change to Published, one to Archived - each with a "Set field" action pointing to the relevant date field and using the current date as the value. This way dates are always accurate without relying on anyone to fill them in manually.
Automation for stale documents. Create an automation that sends a reminder to the Owner when a Published document hasn't been updated in 90+ days. See
Template. If you'd rather start from a pre-built setup, install the Company Wiki template and adjust it to your needs.