Plexus, I mean Collaboration Workspace: Not Yet Part of my Daily Diet
A lot has been written, spoken, broadcast, emailed, and even tweeted about Collaboration Workspace. So why am I not visiting this site every day yet?
When I log on to the networks each day, there are a few places I visit regularly. I probably visit the SAP blogs and wiki more than the forums, as ASUG.COM also has discussion forums. But the content on CW.sap.com hasn’t yet reached a critical mass that would add this site to my daily regimen.
On Monday, SAP Mentors and a few bloggers (e.g., ITSinsider) were given another opportunity to get a demo of Plexus, er, CW. As I’ve logged in before, there wasn’t much news to me, and in fact, the screen shots via the Adobe web sharing tool were so fuzzy, I would have had no idea what I was looking at. I think the total audience was around 20, and the main questions revolved more around access than about the tool suite (though there was a geeky detour around what the next version of Clearspace would be numbered).
The two main problems I see are:
- Getting access, or even knowing about what to access, is obscured. By necessity, someone holds the keys to the private workspaces.
- While there are 16 active top level workspaces, only 4 are visible. One that I want to join, ASUG/SAP Influence Councils, is invisible. I know it’s there since I saw it demoed during an earlier webcast.
On Monday, Aaron William, SAP VP. listed his 3 responsibilities:
1) Ent Svcs Program (ES community)
2) Co-Innvovation lab
3) Collaboration workspace
I asked about tag clouds, and Dagfinn responded:
(g) Dagfinn Parnas: (11:28) Jim: This shows tag clouds on cw https://cw.sap.com/tags?containerType=14&container=1
But, going to a site, er workspace, often gives you:
It appears you’re not allowed to view what you requested. You might contact your administrator if you think this is a mistake.
I don’t have an administrator, that I know about, anyway.
Above is a screen shot (it is very challenging to get the wide open spaces of this tool into the 700×500 blog shot limits). Your “SAP BPX Roundtable Team”? Empty. Go to each one, “by clibking the links [sic]”. The how to join button isn’t jumping out at me.
So, here’s what’s in my CW inbox:
Company Membership Agreement Requirements
Signed by your Company?
ASUG Membership Request Pending
CAG Exhibit to the ESCMA No, Send to My Company
ES Community Membership Agreement No, Send to My Company
Product CDG Exhibit to the ESCMA No, Send to My Company
Confused about what “Request Pending” and “No, Send to My Company” means? I am. So, it’s off to the help channels for clarification. I would be nice if this was all intuitive, and it will be one day.
References:
| Blog | Subject |
|---|---|
| The Enterprise Architect’s World – Episode 59 | The Enterprise Architect’s World – Episode 59 |
| 9565 | ASUG08 – Third stage, reentry and recovery (day #3 was NOT a half day!) |
| SAPPHIRE08 – an outsider’s view | SAPPHIRE08 – an outsider’s view |
| Additions to Grumpy Old Man’s SAPPHIRE blog | Additions to Grumpy Old Man’s SAPPHIRE blog |
| Manufacturing Excellence and The Perfect Plant | Manufacturing Excellence and The Perfect Plant |
| Reach Roundtable Fully Compliant | Reach Roundtable Fully Compliant |
| Co-Innovation Lab Demo Day – Live from the Silicon Valley | Co-Innovation Lab Demo Day – Live from the Silicon Valley |
| Accessing the Collaboration Workspace | Accessing the Collaboration Workspace |
| The specified item was not found. | The Story behind Innovation Games: A new Web 2.0 collaborative tool |
| 10191 | How BPX is Helping SAP Customers Achieve REACH Compliance |
| Winning SDN and BPX Community Sessions at SAP TechEd 2008 Las Vegas | Winning SDN and BPX Community Sessions at SAP TechEd 2008 Las Vegas |
| New Collaboration Room for Sharing Information about CCTS Modeler Warp 10 Prototype | New Collaboration Room for Sharing Information about CCTS Modeler Warp 10 Prototype |
TechEd Sessions
Las Vegas:
SOA118 How SOA and Web 2.0 Come Together With Project Plexus BPX-member session Speaker(s): Kartik Iyengar
Berlin:
UP160 Forums and Wikis in SAP NetWeaver Portal [2 hours hands on] Speaker(s): Vera Gutbrod; Anja Huber; Christian Stadler
ASUG discussion forum thread on Collaboration Workspace:
It is early days and like so many things in this space needs a monumental amount of work to engage people into becoming community oriented.
https://cw.sap.com/community/bpx_roundtables
I've cleaned up the messaging to avoid further frustrations.
Your next tour will be less taxing.
Kieran