Wiki

The wiki is your team’s own workspace: escalation steps, refund rules, on-call rotas, meeting notes, project plans, a daily journal. A page is made of blocks, from text and to-do lists to tables, files and whole databases. Pages nest under each other, link to each other and mention tickets, contacts and teammates.

Your team’s own docs, notes and project databases can also live in Pages, the same engine with a tree of its own in the sidebar. The wiki stays your runbooks and policies.

The wiki is for members only. Customers never see it: it is not part of the help center, the chat widget, email answers or anything the AI agent tells a customer. For articles customers read, use the knowledge base, or publish a page to it as a draft.

Your pages are in the app’s own sidebar too, under Pages, beside your tickets and mail. Open Wiki under Workspace for the wiki’s home, or press g then w.

This guide covers pages and writing. The wiki has more guides of its own:

• Databases: tables, boards, calendars and timelines of pages, with properties, filters and formulas.
• Canvas: cards of notes, pages, links and images on an endless board, connected by arrows.
• Links, tags and the graph: backlinks, unlinked mentions, tags, the outline and the graph view.
• Comments and following: comments on text or on a page, reactions, mentions, reminders and who is on a page.
• Tickets, the help center and Ollie: tickets and contacts in pages, ticket lists, publishing articles, and Ollie writing with you.
• Import and export: bring pages in from Notion, Obsidian, Confluence or Markdown files, and take them out as Markdown or HTML.

Reading the keys

mod is ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl elsewhere.

Pages in the main sidebar

The app’s sidebar has a Pages section with every page, database and canvas you can see:

• The workspace’s pages, nested. Hover a page’s icon to fold its subpages, and drag pages to move them.
• A row for each team you can see with pages, and its pages under it.
• Private: pages only you see.
• Today’s note, Templates and Trash.

Hover a page for its +, which adds a subpage, and its menu: Add to favorites, Duplicate, Move to…, Copy link, Open beside, Add to Space, Hide from sidebar and Move to trash. Pages you star show in Favorites at the top of the sidebar.

+ beside Pages, or New page in the menu beside New ticket at the top, opens a small window: pick where the page goes, then a Page, a Database or a Canvas, a template, or files to import. You can also drop files from your computer onto Pages to import them.

To choose what shows, open Customize sidebar and expand Pages: hide the whole section, any part of it, a team’s pages or a top-level page. Hide from sidebar in a page’s menu does it at once. A Space can hold the whole Pages section, a team’s pages or single pages.

While Pages is in your sidebar, a page opens without the wiki’s own page list beside it, so it has the whole width. Show it again with the button at the left of the page’s header; your choice is kept in this browser.

The wiki’s sidebar

The wiki’s own sidebar, beside the wiki’s home and its pages, holds every page you can see, in sections:

• Search pages and + at the top. + offers New page, New database, New canvas and Import.
• Favorites: pages you starred. Star a page with the star in its header, or Add to favorites in its menu. Drag favorites to put them in order.
• A teamspace for each team you can see: the team’s own pages.
• Workspace: pages every member sees.
• Private: pages only you see.
• Recent: the pages you opened lately.
• At the bottom: Today’s note, Templates, Graph, Tags and Trash.

Click a section’s name to fold it. Each section’s + adds a page in it. A page shows a check beside its name while it is verified.

Customize the sidebar

Open a section’s Section options menu and choose Customize sidebar. Move sections up and down, hide the ones you don’t use, and click Done; Reset brings back the usual order. Hide section in the same menu hides one at once. Only you see your sidebar, and this browser keeps it for each workspace.

Workspace, private and team pages

Every top-level page lives in one of three places, and every page under it lives there too:

Section	Who sees its pages
Workspace	Every member of the workspace.
Private	You alone. Nobody else sees them, admins and owners included, nor an API key. Ollie and the AI clients you connect read them as you. Deleting your account deletes them.
A teamspace	The members of a private team, for a private team; every member, for a public one. When a team is deleted, its pages move to Workspace.

To move a page to another place, drag it into that section, or use Move to… and pick Top of the place you want. Its subpages go with it. Only the member a private page belongs to can move it out of Private.

A page you can’t see doesn’t exist for you anywhere: not in the sidebar, search, links, the graph, favorites, recent pages or notifications.

Write a page

1. Create it

   Click + at the top of the sidebar and New page, or the + beside a section or a page to add one there. A new wiki starts with Create the first page, or Import pages to bring them in from another tool.

2. Name it and give it a look

   Type the title at the top. Hover above it to Add icon (an emoji, shown in the sidebar and the breadcrumbs) or Add cover. Press enter to start writing.

3. Write

   Write, or press / for blocks, [[ to link a page and @ to mention someone. There is no save button: the page saves a moment after you stop typing, and the header says Saving and then Saved. Leaving the page, or closing the tab, sends anything not saved yet. mod s saves at once.

Blocks

Type / at the start of a line, or click + beside a line, for the block menu. Keep typing to narrow it (“/call” finds Callout), then press enter.

Group	Blocks
Basic blocks	Text, Heading 1 to Heading 3, Bulleted list, Numbered list, To-do list, Toggle list (a line that opens to show what is inside), Quote, Callout (a tinted box with an icon), Divider, Page (a new subpage, shown where it sits in the text) and Link to page
Media	Image, Video, Audio, File, Web bookmark (a link as a card with its title, description and picture) and Embed
Databases	Table, Board, List, Gallery, Calendar and Timeline make a database inside the page; Linked view of a database shows one that exists. See Databases
Help desk	Ticket list (a saved view’s open tickets) and Mention a ticket. See Tickets, the help center and Ollie
Advanced	Table, 2 columns, 3 columns and 4 columns side by side, Code (highlighted, with a language and Copy code), Block equation (LaTeX) and Table of contents (the page’s headings, kept current)
Inline	Mention a person, Date, Remind me, Inline equation and Emoji
Colours	Type a colour’s name (“/red”, “/blue background”) to colour the line or its background

With AI on, the menu starts with Ask Ollie to write. See Ollie in the wiki.

The block handle

Hover over any block, including a list item or a block in a column, and a handle shows beside it:

• + adds a block below and opens the block menu. alt click adds one above.
• The grip (Drag to move) drags the block anywhere in the page. Click it for the block menu:
  • Turn into: text, a heading, a list, a to-do list, a toggle, a quote, a callout or code.
  • Colour: a text colour or a background, for text, headings, lists, quotes, toggles and callouts.
  • Duplicate (mod d), Copy link to block, Move up and Move down (mod shift ↑ or ↓), and Delete.

A link to a block opens the page scrolled to that block.

Format text

Select text and a toolbar appears over it:

• Ask Ollie about the selected text (mod j).
• Turn into, to change the block the text is in.
• Bold (mod b), Italic (mod i), Underline (mod u), Strikethrough (mod shift s), Inline code (mod e) and Equation.
• Link: paste an address, or type to search pages and link one.
• Colour: a text colour or a background highlight, in nine soft tones. mod shift h highlights in yellow.
• Comment (mod alt m), to comment on the text.

If you prefer a toolbar that stays put, turn on Formatting bar in the page’s More actions menu. This browser remembers it.

Mentions, links and emoji

Type a character and a menu opens where you write:

Type	To insert
@	A teammate (they get a notification), a date (Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, Next week), Remind me, a page, and after two letters a contact or a ticket
[[	A link to a page. When no page has that title, New page “…” makes one under this page and links it
#	A ticket, by number (#1042) or by words (#refund). A word typed after # without picking a ticket stays a tag
:	An emoji, after two letters (:rocket)

Links to pages show the page’s current title and icon, so renaming a page never breaks them. A date opens a picker to change it, add a time or turn on Remind me (reminders).

Markdown shortcuts and paste

Type these at the start of a line, followed by a space:

Type	To get
#, ##, ###	Heading 1, 2 or 3
- or *	Bulleted list
1.	Numbered list
[]	To-do list
>	Quote
>!	Callout
---	Divider
```	Code

Inside a line, **bold**, *italic*, `code`, ~~strike~~ and ==highlight== format as you type, $$x^2$$ becomes an inline equation and $$$x^2$$$ on a line of its own a block equation.

Paste Markdown and it arrives as blocks: headings, lists, to-do lists, quotes, code and tables. Paste a link to a video, a design or a document from a service the wiki can embed on an empty line, and it becomes an embed. Paste or drop files and images: images go into the text, videos and audio as players and anything else as a file, up to 10 at a time.

Keys for blocks

Keys	Action
mod alt 0	Text
mod alt 1 to 3	Heading 1 to 3
mod alt 4	To-do list
mod alt 5	Bulleted list
mod alt 6	Numbered list
mod alt 7	Toggle list
mod alt 8	Code
mod enter	Tick or untick the to-do under the cursor
mod d	Duplicate the block
mod shift ↑ or ↓	Move the block up or down

Every wiki shortcut is also listed in Keyboard shortcuts.

Images, files and embeds

• Images: drag an edge to resize one, align it left, centre or right, and add a Caption.
• Video, Audio and File: upload one, and it plays or downloads from the page.
• Web bookmark: paste a link to show it as a card. opendesk reads the page’s title, description and picture once, when you add it.
• Embed: paste a link to show it in the page. It works with YouTube, Vimeo, Loom, Figma, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drive and Maps, Miro, CodePen, CodeSandbox, Spotify, Excalidraw, Airtable, Typeform and Calendly. A link nothing can play shows as a link.

Images and files you add to a page belong to it: whoever can see the page can open them, in the trash too, and they go when the page is deleted for good. Embeds load in a sandboxed frame, and only from those services.

A page’s look

• Icon: click it to pick another emoji or Remove it.
• Cover: Add cover, then pick one of the Gallery gradients, Upload an image (wide ones work best, 1500 pixels across or more) or paste a Link to one. Hover over it to Change cover, Reposition it (drag up or down to show another part) or Remove it.
• Style, in the page’s More actions menu: the font (Default, Serif or Mono), Small text and Full width.
• Lock page, in the same menu, keeps it from being edited by accident: it opens read-only for everyone, with Unlock for people who may edit.

The look is part of the page, so everyone sees the same. Changing it is not an edit: it doesn’t start a new version in the history.

Organize pages

• Add a subpage with the + beside a page in the sidebar, from the page’s menu, or under Subpages at the bottom of a page. Pages nest up to 10 levels.
• Drag a page in the sidebar onto another to put it inside, or above or below one to reorder. Its subpages move with it. Drop it in another section to move it there.
• Move to… in a page’s menu, in the sidebar or the page header, picks where it goes from a searchable list: under a page, or at the Top of a section. The page goes last there. On a phone or tablet this is how pages move.
• With the keyboard: in the sidebar, the arrow keys move between pages, → opens a page’s subpages and ← closes them, and enter opens a page. alt with ↑ or ↓ moves the page among its neighbours, alt → puts it inside the page above, and alt ← moves it out a level.
• Duplicate copies a page with its subpages, its text and its look, as “(copy)” beside it. Links between the copied pages point at the copies.
• Copy link gives an address teammates can open.
• Add to Space puts the page in one of your Spaces, the sidebars you build yourself.
• Export downloads the page as Markdown or HTML, with its subpages in a zip if you like; Import here brings pages in under it. See Import and export.

Templates

Open Templates at the bottom of the sidebar.

• Starter templates: escalation process, refund policy, onboarding checklist, meeting notes, incident review, how-to guide, project brief, decision record, customer call notes, FAQ and weekly team sync, in your language.
• Your team’s templates: pages your team keeps as templates. New template makes one; Save as template in any page’s menu copies that page, with its subpages, into one.

Click Use on a template to make a page from it. Opening a template shows Use this template at the top; edit it like any page. Templates stay out of the sidebar, search, links and the graph, and their dates remind nobody. A copy of a template starts with fresh reminders, owned by whoever made it.

Databases keep templates of their own, for new rows. See Databases.

The trash

Move to trash in a page’s menu takes the page and its subpages out of the wiki. A message says so, with Undo.

Open Trash at the bottom of the sidebar to see what is there: who moved each page and when, where it was, how many subpages went with it and when it goes for good. Search the trash, or open a page to read it.

• Restore puts a page back with everything that went with it: under its parent when that is still in the wiki, otherwise at the top of its section.
• Pages stay in the trash for 30 days, then they and their history are deleted for good.
• Delete for good deletes one at once, with its subpages and their history. opendesk asks first and says how many subpages go with it.

A page in the trash can be read but not changed, and it keeps its comments, files and history until it goes.

Find a page

• Search pages at the top of the sidebar matches titles and text, also partly typed words, and shows a passage around each match.
• The command menu (mod k) finds wiki pages next to tickets, contacts and articles, and offers New wiki page.
• The wiki’s home lists the pages edited most recently and every top-level page. Open a random page brings back one you may have forgotten.
• Ask Ollie: “What’s our refund escalation process?” Ollie searches the wiki, reads the page and says which one the answer comes from. On a wiki page, ask it to “Summarize this page”.

Tags, backlinks and the graph find pages by how they connect: see Links, tags and the graph.

Editing together

Pages update live for everyone who has them open, and the header shows who else is on the page and who is editing it. See Comments and following.

If a teammate saves the page while you have changes that are not saved yet, opendesk keeps your text and asks: Load their version to take theirs, or Keep mine to save yours over it. Nothing is overwritten without that choice. When you can’t edit a page (a viewer, or your role changed), or the page was deleted while you had changes not saved yet, the page says so and offers Copy my text, so nothing you typed is lost.

History

Click History in the page header to see earlier versions, who wrote them and when, and to read each one. One person’s edits a few minutes apart are kept as one version; up to 100 versions are kept per page. Restore this version puts an older version back; the version it replaces stays in the history.

Verified pages

Mark the pages your team can rely on. Under a page’s title, click Verify and pick how long: For 30 days, For 90 days, For 180 days, For 365 days, or Until someone changes it, with no end date. The page then reads “Verified by Maya until 3 March”, and a check shows beside it in the sidebar.

When the time runs out it reads Verification expired, a sign to read it again. Click it to Verify again or Remove verification. Anyone who may edit the page can verify it, as themselves.

Your journal

Today’s note at the bottom of the sidebar opens your note for today, and makes it the first time. Daily notes live in your Journal, a private page at the top of Private: only you see them.

On a daily note, the arrows go to the Previous day and Next day, the date opens a calendar to Go to a day (the days with a note are marked), and Today’s note comes back to today. One note per day; a day without one is made when you open it. A note you move out of the journal becomes an ordinary page.

Who can do what

Role	Read and comment	Create, edit, move, restore	Move to trash, delete for good
Viewer	Read only	No	No
Agent	Yes	Yes	Pages they created, with only their own pages under them
Admin, owner	Yes	Yes	Any page

Moving a page to the trash and deleting it for good follow the same rule: when someone else created the page or any page under it, only an admin can, and the menu says why. Anyone who may edit can restore a page from the trash. Private pages are their member’s alone, whatever the role. Creating, moving to the trash, restoring and deleting pages is recorded in the audit log.

Good to know

• A workspace holds up to 5,000 pages, the trash and templates included, of up to 512 KB of text each, with titles of up to 200 characters.
• Page text is cleaned before it is stored, so only safe formatting is kept.
• API keys and AI clients reach the wiki with the wiki:read and wiki:write scopes (Wiki API, MCP server). An API key never sees private pages; an AI client connected as a member reads that member’s own.

Related

• Databases
• Canvas pages
• Links, tags and the graph
• Comments and following
• Tickets, the help center and Ollie
• Import and export
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Wiki API