Stack Internal is so much more than knowledge capture. It’s a collaborative community that helps organizations break down silos between teams. Because Internal is a private instance, newer coworkers feel less intimidated asking “newbie” questions than they would in the larger public platform. And you have the ability to recognize team members as moderators and SMEs, even if they haven’t been at your company for years.

On the public site, new users have limited actions until they earn enough Reputation Points. For example, a brand new user can’t upvote or downvote answers. It can take years for new users to accumulate enough reputation points to be recognized as an expert on the public site. Plus, the same expert global community that provides thorough answers can be intimidating to junior technologists. Conversely, inside an organization’s Teams environment, new users can easily establish their expertise on projects, topic areas. They can confidently ask questions and seek input right away. New hires with expertise in a niche area can start being visible and helping teammates straight away.

Finding the right expert within an organization is often more important—and more challenging—than finding the right document. If you know who in your organization is suited to answering your question, you can specify those users. They will receive a notification when the question is posted to Stack Internal. If you don’t know the right person, you can select a SME or user group associated with the topic Tags you’ve chosen from a dropdown list. User groups can be customized to fit your organization’s structure. For example, an “engineering” user group might be the entire engineering team or a sub-team that works on a specific product, like “product x devs.”

Regardless of whether you’ve tagged a SME or team, anyone in your organization who knows the answer can respond. This connects you with experts across different business units and locations — even if you’ve never met before.