I hacked Notion wikis
Add Page Verification to any Notion database — without having to convert to a Notion wiki.
I don’t about you but I think the native Notion Wiki feature sucks. It drives me absolutely bonkers that it’s separate from databases, and you’ve got to jump through a bunch of hoops to set it up — all to just get access to page verification. Even as a Notion expert, I still get confused on how to get to wikis.
So I hacked it.
Now obviously, page verification & expiration is pretty important. It helps teams keep on top of their SOPs especially when their product is ever evolving like a client I worked with in the FinTech space that I developed this setup for.
In that project, we migrated them from Slite, a knowledge management tool. It was the one feature they hoped to keep — without it being intrusive to their work.
To achieve this hack and turn a plain, boring database into a custom wiki, I needed to include a few things;
an editable page owner for notifications
verification options
an updates output to easily see what’s going on
a simple layout & ability to hide excess properties
and automations to keep everything running
When a page is created, the owner is automatically tagged, and the verification is set to 30 days. After expiring, the automations are triggered to notify the page owner to review and re-verify for however appropriate. All the while, the Updates property reflects the verification status for viewers to stay informed.
This fun little hack probably seems like such an advanced-user feature, but honestly, it’s become a go-to that I include with all of my clients.
But i’m sure you’re thinking, “Sara why not just use Notion Wikis?” Well the cool thing about this hack is that you can customize it based on the database contents, team use, etc. For instance, with the client I originally built this for, they have a wiki for every department, with IT re-verifying docs less frequently than the product team.
The only thing the native wiki feature has the ability to do that this hack cant, is select a custom verify date, but out of the 10ish clients I’ve shared this with, no one has needed it. So until then, let me show you how I built V1 of this setup.
Written By: Sara Loretta
👋🏼 Sara Loretta is the Chief Digital Architect & Founder @ _systms™ — she’s also the 10th US Certified Notion Consultant, and 1st Certified Paperform Expert. Through her work and creatorship, Sara is focused on connecting and educating teams on tech, workflows, and all the ways they can optimize their business to scale.
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