SCN is much user friendly than Old SDN
HI SAPians,
I am so happy to write my first Blog in the SCN , that too in SCN beta. I just want to share my own experience in SCN beta.its amazing and very interesting in scn beta. Especially i like many options they are “FORUM FINDER”,”SCN SITE INDEX”,”DISCUSSIONS”, “COMMUNICATONS”, ” LIKE BUTTON”, “YOUR HISTORY” and “BOOK MARKS”.
The idea to initiate me to write this blog for to show case how SCN beta is user friendly than Old SDN, i have seen many threads and and many queries about user friendly of SCN beta.I am going to list some of the new features in SCN which i liked most and hope fully you also feel the same.
SCN site index is a place where you can get all forums with Index specified.
Discussions(FORUMS),Apart from new attractive look , now it has Like and Book mark option.Similarly social networks with current trend LIKE concept is good.We can use this option to like the answers , for the different question , suggestions.it will encourage the SCNian .
Book mark option to follow the selected thread for clarifications and to know answer for the thread.The helpful and solved answers are in different colours, it makes us to find the exact answers, instaed of reading the entire thread to save time.
The next feature which i like most is combining Blogs , Discussions ,Documents(articles) in a single page for a particular topic.For example, if i want to search some thing on ABAP dictionary, Threads, blogs and articles were at different plcaes but now in SCN beta all ABAP Dictionary related topice comes under in a single page for better search .
Create option in the first page, with this option itself we can create everything(BLOG,Discussion,Document) there itself instead of navigating to concerned pages.easy and user friendly.
Communications is more intresting options, which gives updates for the answers of other users for the thread which you have answered.with this we can follow/get other users answers and suggestions.
I am not sure if you are part of the SCN development team, but I am having a hard time understanding which SCN experience to take exception with first. But I will limit myself to just one question.
In a single 30 minute session, how many dropped logins and other errors have you encountered?
Regards, Mike
HI Michael,
Thanks for your comments, I am not a part of SCN development team, I do respect your question ,.
We do understand that we have some issues but believe me its not a small project. Its huge amount of data being moved to new SCN so many threads so many articles, e learnings etc etc.... So many users going live at same go so many advanced features.In case few small hiccups are there they will get resolved soon.
Actually new SCN has brought more life into our community..a power to interact .so many powerful features...simply one stop shop for SAP related info..queries..more organized.
So bare the small issues for time being quickly it will be resolved and i can proudly say that SCN beta is user friendly then SDN.
I forgot to appreciate SCN development team in my above article , For the new SCN beta, Kudos to the entire team.I take this opportunity to convey my congrats to the team.
Regards,
Saravana.S
Hi Saravana,
This may be a huge project and it has a greatly different look and feel from the old SDN (especially the forums). The editing tools are a definite improvement, but they still have a way to go before they have gotten it working as well as the old forums. I expect they will get there and have already made quite a few improvements over the last two days. However, what you refer to as small issues are major issues, particularly to those of us who use and contribute to the forums.
But I will notice that you did not answer the simple question I had posed. So I have concluded that it might contradict some of your comments about "small hiccups".
Regards, Mike
We must have different definitions of "user friendly". To me "user friendly" means something that is easy to use, easy to navigate and intuitive for an average person. I agree that some things you mention (such as "like" option) are nice to have. But I would not count those as "user friendliness".
In the old SCN I could go to the main page (sdn.sap.com) and if I needed to go to the blogs - I'd click the button that said "Blogs". Same for eLearning and Forums. With this new "welcome" page I feel completely lost.
For some reason forums were spread across very many "communities". This might work great if you're a functional consultant who dwells in just one module, excuse me - "community". But I'd usually visit 5-6 forums in different areas, which I could previously access from a single page. Now I have to go to different pages and from there click through 3 additional tabs and buttons just to get to the list of posts in a readable format. (And thank goodness for the zoom feature in browsers because the new text is unreadable.) How is this an improvement?
Unless someone can explain how this could be customized ("Getting started" does not cover this), I believe that "new SCN" is extremely user-unfriendly to the users who have interests in different communities and to those who mostly use forums.
Search never worked well before and I don't feel it has improved much, unfortunately (e.g. I tried using it to search for the page to report bugs - try entering 'SCN bug report' and see what comes up). I wish SCN would just add Google search and be done with it.
I admit that I'm a rather conservative person, but I understand that change brings some challenges and I can adapt. However, in all my years "on the interwebs" I don't remember a single time I'd be so completely lost on a web site. And I have a silver medal to prove I'm not completely dumb.
Hi Jelena,
You must not be the only conservative person in the SCN community. And your comments on the search capability were pertinent and unfortunately all too true (both current and previous systems).
I did go back and performed the search again this afternoon on "SCN bug report". I am happy to report that the first result was a direct link to the correct community. The subsequent ones were a bit less pertinent until I changed the ordering from relevance to newest first. Makes me wonder how the relevance setting actually works. The second, third, and fourth results were from 2008 prior to the switch.
While I am getting more used to the mechanics of navigating to multiple threads in multiple discussion lists, the navigation still leaves a whole LOT to be desired.
Michael, thanks for the update. I think someone mentioned there were some recent changes made in Search functionality. In the first few days the results were completely off (at least for me). Still I very much prefer just to use Google, which has better performance and not as cluttered. Since I've discovered a 'site:sap.com' feature in Google few years ago I think I've pretty much stopped complaining about the search on SDN. 🙂
Kind of sad when we have to send folks to google because the inhouse search function was so bad. Hopefully the new one will be better. Or at least the communities still show up in a google search. Can you post a picture of how you use site:sap.com in google?
Thanks, Mike
It's just an addition in the search field. E.g. if you're searching for information related to F110 transaction, enter 'F110 site:sap.com' and it'll bring up the results only from all the SAP domain (this includes SCN and SAP Help, for example). I found this feature through 'Advanced search', which used to be on the Google main page, but now you have to search first and then click another button to get there. (Hiding things seems to be a trend nowadays, sigh...)
I guess they simply want more opportunity to bombard you with various ads and link pages. Thanks for the help.