The New SCN: A Perspective
The human mind is incredible (in a positive and negative way). Take mine for example. I had been waiting for quite a while for the new SCN to be live that when it finally happened, I completely forgot the day (negative). So a bit late though, here I am trying to fanatically understand this whole new world that they call Jive!
So the below is my experience so far;
1. This is a real uneasy platform to transition into. But having said that maybe it is a matter of time. We all need to give it a couple of weeks and our senses hopefully will tune into this (positive). 😐
2. The social media aspect like following people and making connections is really exciting.The wall like feature to view ongoing activities also gives the users a good preference in browsing through interests much faster 🙂
3. The new editors in the forum and blogs etc are welcome additions. 🙂
3. I am upset that mostly all my blogs have lost its formatting. Some have even lost the screenshots embedded into them. Blogs are very critical in terms of the information that it contains and are one of the most accessed piece of information in SCN. I would have expected more care in it’s migration. I would even go to the extreme to say that some blogs have become useless post migration onto the new platform 🙁
4. From the Process Integration space, I think there needs to be a consolidation or more awareness. Currently there are two space as below;
| Process Integration | http://scn.sap.com/community/icc/integration-scenario-pi |
|---|---|
| Process Integration | http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware |
This is spreading the information across and is not providing a consolidated view. This needs to be managed better. 🙁
5. Does the search functionality work for you? I tried with both Chrome and IE. But the search doesn’t really return me anything. 🙁
6. The old SCN was much more structured. The new one seems to be an information overload. I still prefer a logical separation of the forum posts, wikis, blogs etc. Now when I land up on the topic space, I see a constant stream of data and maybe it’s my limited attention span that is not helping me here 🙁
7. I am being logged out frequently 🙁
8. The site seems to be relatively slow and unstable 🙁
Well, the above are my quick observations and currently the sad smiley’s [ 🙁 ] outnumber the happy ones [ 🙂 ]. Hope that changes with time (not too much of time though). To help you around this new SCN site, I have written a blog which I hope might come handy to some of you- http://scn.sap.com/community/pi-and-soa-middleware/blog/2012/03/13/quick-tips-how-to-find-your-way-in-the-new-world-of-scn
So what are your views? Put in your feedback as a comment and lets hope SAP is reading this.
Update: Or better, post your observations and report bugs here – http://scn.sap.com/community/support/scn-bug-reporting
Ok.. made a discovery if I may say so ...
In the topic window, use the content tab, and then you can segregate the blogs, discussions, documents etc. That should kind of help with point number 6
While I guess we will all learn to live the the rest of the features and changes with time, the issue with the blogs are difficult to get over. Manual porting of blogs where all previous alignment , code is lost is not fun.
I havent been a avid blogger ( both on and off SCN ) but even the few ones I had to port manually wasn't fun. The blogs on SCN have been a warehouse of critical information and if all that content is going to be lost, well years of work is lost.
A few bloggers have moved on to better things but older blogs are still read and provide tons of info. What if they do not feel the urge to port their content over to the new System?
Going to be interesting to see what the analysts have to say on this!
i would be surprised if the 'un-ported' blogs are not accessible public even if the author has not taken any action.
That is correct, even if they are not ported, they are in search and findable.
Mark,
Any idea why most of the blogs have just lost their formatting and the pictures embedded in them? Any work around or tips to get them back in shape other than to rewrite them? 🙂
I can think of many reasons why but I can give you a good tip on how to fix it. There's a remove formating button on the toolbar, just right of the font size drop down box and above the styles. It will remove any obsolete html formatting inherited from the old blog system.
Toggle to HTML view to view the before and after.
And about styles, use them to define your headers, paragraph text and so on: your blogs (and documents, discussion threads) will look better!
The site is and feels Beta. It is very slow at times, you get logged out almost on every other click 🙁
On the 🙂 side, the search seems faster and more responsive.
The overall concept is really better; I like the modern networking features, the fresh look and the personal "activity wall".
If only this "Internal server error" pop up didn't come up every 30 seconds....and I cannot show it to you since the "Insert Image" button in the editor is not working 😥
interestingly in my case i have not been able to do a search till now... what browser are you using? when i do a search it open a new window but apart from the standard SCN headers none of my searched items are visible.
And yeah.. getting logged out every 4th or 5th click is irritating indeed 😡
I use Google Chrome (stable 17.0.963.79). The search tab opens fast with all results visible really faster than the old search. Applying filters is almost instant! ➕ 1 from me!
My first impression was not good. I said to myself : I am getting too old, you refuse the change.
Then by reading some blogs I felt I am not alone.
My big disapointment is the speed ... Some pages are taking more than 10 secs to display. Is SCN running on HANA ? 😉
I will wait a couple of days before coming back on SCN ... where before I was looking at it everyday.
Thanks for sharing Shabarish. You first point really hit home with me: I've been using this platform and a previous version of it for over a year now. The first couple of weeks, with all the notifications being received and new features, were really, really overwhelming. It was a steep learning curve, even for someone that's tech oriented.
After that first period, I got used to it and embraced it for what it is: highly interactive, fast, flexible, expandable... My first instinct was to compare it to Facebook: groups, endless news feeds (this was 1.5 yrs ago), connections--and I remember Facebook was a little overwhelming at first.
But, like you said, the human mind is incredible: it can adapt. I've used Jive for projects and it's been really good at helping me collaborate with colleagues worldwide, much better than any tool I've used before. There's just that initial learning period to get over.
Hi.
I agree with the main points on this blog, I know , no one like changes. I will expected maybe in one week after launch of this new SCN , to give a more reasonable opinion about that. I saw a great changes specially with relationship social media.
I always use chrome this is my favorite browser to search blogs,wiki,forums.. but until now I detected some bugs.
We need to adapt to this new SCN, almost changes are positive. Only expected that SAP fixed the bugs to work normally.
Hello,
Certainly I miss the easy and known navigation of old SCN. It is just a matter of time till we gain fluency while navigating here too and getting accustomed to different look of blogs, especially! There are a lot new functionalities added to every content section like DM, follow, notifications etc. Collaboration is greatly promoted now. It all depends on how well and efficiently these new functionalities are used or even required by an individual. I somehow find that social media's influence each other and best of any is inherited in the other. Have you used Streamworks anytime?
Regards,
Kumud
this is definitely a giant leap towards the theme of collaboration. And yes, I have used streamworks... reminds me of Google Wave.. may it R.I.P!
There was a thread in PI space asking about views for new SCN. I made a comment there and copying it here. The thread link is http://scn.sap.com/thread/3144199
"This is new and believe me, no one like changes. There has been a lot of improvement and effort to put this in place and I believe the judgement you all are making seems pretty hasty. There have been only couple of days since new SCN is live and therefore I think you should give it some time before you should judge it.
How many of you remember the day when you first saw old SDN layout? I remember mine, though it has been more than 5 years now. I simply thought "What the hell is this?". At that time, I couldn't find any proper way of browsing things on SDN. When I checked the forum, I was all blank if I should really use something like this. However, slowly as time passed, I started liking it and soon it become one of my favourite pasttime.
Have you noticed:
- how easy it is to follow, bookmark and track
- how interesting it is to get better ways to socialize professionally
- how advanced the UI is in terms of posting things
- how thoughtful the point allocation is
and the list can go on and on...
Having said that, I know that there are some bugs and some differences than the old SDN. I know that there is a dedicated SCN team which is working hard to resolve them as soon as possible. Remember, you managed to post things here simply means that the new SCN is user friendly enough to self explain its offerings. 😉
P.S I am not an SAP employee 🙂 Neither am I saying that new SCN is the best thing out there to solve all your needs, I am just asking to "give it some time" "and give some time to it".
"
Hi,
On point 4 of your list: I think the situation isn't too bad. The upper url, http://scn.sap.com/community/icc/integration-scenario-pi , seems to point to a subspace of icc (integration and certification center), and will 'only' be used for that purpose (I hope), which leaves http://scn.sap.com/content/pi-and-soa-middleware as the real space for us PI-people.
So please move this blog over there 😉
Cheers, Fred
yes.. we have been discusssing with the SCN team to get it into a subspace last week 🙂 glad that SCN team is open to suggestions and i think we will see more consolidation and structuring going foreward...
and about moving the blog i need to try as once marked in a space, it doesnt seem to give me an option to move it further