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Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett

I want my old forums back! (Actually, I can have them for the most part)

I’ve seen several complaints that the new view of the forum is bad because it’s not possible to see a bunch of threads at once. Some people seem to be writing off the new discussion forums entirely because of this, while never making it far enough to see the great new editing and discussion tools. Since a view very similar to the old forum view is possible on the new SCN, I thought I’d give a quick how-to!

The default

This is how the forum view looks by default. Indeed, not much information density compared to the old forums.

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The secret move

Fortunately, we can do something about this! Click on the lines in the upper-right corner of the forum view.

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The reveal

Now we have a view in a tabular format that is much more readable.

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Bonus

There is lots more that you can do in this view as well, like filtering to only unanswered questions, filtering by tag/text, and sorting in various ways. No, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good!

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      Author's profile photo Audrey Stevenson
      Audrey Stevenson

      Ethan,

      Thanks for writing this. I've been trying to get the word out in individual threads to users where I can, but this blog should be very helpful for everyone!

      --Audrey

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi,

      Still we would like to access old forums look an feel.

      Is there a way to access old foums display?

      Thaaks

      Phani

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      The new scn is really awful! I can't easily find contents like before and clicking on any links takes forever to get results. Can we go back to the old scn?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Where to search for words in the forums? All I see is fillter by tags etc.

      Author's profile photo Oliver Kohl
      Oliver Kohl

      Why not try the global search in the top right?

      Screen Shot 2012-04-06 at 09.51.48.png

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Not a valid answer. In a particular forum I want to search only the topics of that forum. This is so central to using a knowledgebase that I cannot believe SAP got it wrong. Have a look at any other major forum site e.g. stackoverflow.

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      For what's it's worth: Getting the Most out of Google: Optimizing Your Search Queries

      If you want to searching for a specific space, quote it's name in the query like this: "scn support"  You can this with the Google custom search for SCN that retrieves only SCN results and where you can then apply filters such as 'discussions.'

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Did you ever find a solution for this?  I have the same problem.  I've sent two emails to SCN and nobody has responded with a solution.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Ethan, this is great...you've summarized, in a really thoughtful and concise way, how to solve an issue that is a problem for some users.

      Appreciate all your work on this.

      --Pat

      Author's profile photo Vinoth Kumar
      Vinoth Kumar

      Thanks Ethan for sharing. I am not able to differentiate the threads, which has been created (since my last visit). In Old forums, there was a full red circle and half red circle.

      Hope this is missing in new Discussion or Forum

      Vinoth

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vinoth,

      I don't know of a way to recreate exactly this functionality. What you will probably want to do is go to the Space that you are interested in and click "Track in Communications" (on the right). Then every new posting will show up in your communications area and you can tick them off as you read them. However, this will also pull new blogs in the area into your communications page.

      Another option is to use feeds. They work and they are great! Go to the space you want and click "View Feeds" on the right. You'll see a list of links to feeds, including a feed of discussions and discussion messages. Take one of these links to a feed reader like Google Reader and subscribe. You'll then be able to see every new discussion or message created in the area.

      Hopefully this helps!

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks, Ethan...good advice.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Vinoth

      This may not be the exact replication of the function you are looking for, but if you 'follow' a space, then any new activity in that space is shown as 'new' in your activity feed. Below is an example of how i see it in my activity list ('1 new' shown in green)

      Regards

      Jhansi

      Author's profile photo Kuldip Jhala
      Kuldip Jhala

      Can anyone tell me whats to do if I want to send a discussion to my email id like we used to send it in old one.

      Kuldip

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Kuldip,

      Go to the discussion and click "Receive email notifications" on the right side of the screen. You can do the same for Spaces as well, so you receive emails about all discussions.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo srinivas b n
      srinivas b n

      The Old Forum View was much better to Understand and to have a proper Search on what we wanted to check for resolution, This new view is more Confusing and Complicated.

      Why should we change something which is simple to uderstand, instead of improvising it

      SRINIVAS

      Author's profile photo Sukhbold Altanbat
      Sukhbold Altanbat

      I think the new look is great and better. There are new changes that I like. Such as able to sort out trending contents, sharing the content, sending private messages to other member, all the contents (thread, blog, doc, poll, etc..) are bundled into the topic. I didn't understand why wiki is left out.

      But there are couple of problems in terms of ease of use.

      In new design, we cannot make use of URL now. In old design, all the forums were numbered. So I used to jump from one forum place to other just using URL and changing the number. Now if you want to jump, you have to go back to the all places.

      Example: finance related topics were under forumID=141

      Also, the blogs were numbered in the old design. Now the topic name is part of URL.

      Thanks,

      Sukhbold

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Wow! You are really a power-user, memorizing all of those forum numbers 🙂 I think you'll probably need to switch to using bookmarks for this, unfortunately. You can still go directly to URLs for each space filtered to discussions only, but it is not as simple as just changing a number in the URL.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Sukhbold...thanks for your comments. You're correct that the URL convention will be different. I'm hoping that it will be easier to find discussions based on topic because of the ability to use the faceted search and to track discussions. I think you'll find that functionality like this will ultimately make the discussions more useful.

      Author's profile photo Sven Mader
      Sven Mader

      Hi Ethan

      >like filtering to only unanswered questions

      And how can I make it? I want read only new or changed threads. In the past I had a orange picture to see it.

      Sven

      Author's profile photo Sven Mader
      Sven Mader

      and, how can set the flag "make as read" to all thread. => I want the same functionality as in the old forum.

      Sven

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Sven,

      Once you choose "Discussions" you'll see a drop-down appear where you can choose "All discussions", "Open Discussions", "Unanswered discussions", or "Discussion threads" (whatever that means!).

      I don't think you can see only new or changed threads, but as I described in my comment above, you can use feeds or tracking to do something similar.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Sven Mader
      Sven Mader

      Thank you. I havn't seen this filter: "All discussions", "Open Discussions", "Unanswered discussions", or "Discussion threads. But this isn't the old information of unread threads, I think.

      Open discussion: the thread has not the status "finished", unanswered discussion: the thread has only the question, and nobody has answered.

      Sven

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ethan,

      Thank you.. I have been trying  to figure this out for the past 2 days..

      Regards,

      Ershad Ahmed.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ethan,

      The old forum view was much better. In new view I am not able to see "Your Control Panel" option to filter my posts. Even I am not able to trace the one post I have made just one day before the latest view changes.

      Regards,

      Vinod Punnoran

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Vinod,

      I think you can just click your name at the very top of the page and then go to the "Content" tab. You can then sort by latest activity or by date created to see your most recently created posts. Does that work for you?

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks, Ethan...It worked for me.

      Regards,

      Vinod Punnoran

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi

      Can i add screen shots in my Question? This will be very useful.

      Is it possible with new SCN

      Regards

      DJ

      Author's profile photo Trond Stroemme
      Trond Stroemme

      ...and how do you go about searching the forum before posting a question? I cannot see a search box anymore, except the one at the very top of the screen, which seems to be "universal"...

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Yes, and the search box at the top doesn't currently work for new content, though that should be rectified soon. Making it easier to search a specific forum is definitely a missing feature. One way to sort of do this is to go to the "Content" tab for the Space you want to search in and then you can filter by keyword, but that isn't quite as powerful as actually being able to search.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Will the ability to search a particular forum be added back in? This was very important as the results were much more useful that the universal search?

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Robert,

      I recommend creating the idea in Idea Place, then posting a link to it here. I'm sure you'll get lots of votes 🙂

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Idea is created...for those that want to vote or comment, you can see it here:

      https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/ideas/9597

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Cool, thanks for doing this! I voted for it.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      what will happen to our old favourite urls? i can't find the same pages with the same url. that is boring.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi, I'm sorry, but the new environment (by the moment) is quite annoying. It is difficult to find old information, find your own posts, the performance is not good actually...

      Possibly it has lots of contents, but it is not intuitive. In case you want to find a solution for a problem quickly, this new design make things harder. Sorry for being so negative, but this is my point of view as a visitor and contributor of the site.

      Author's profile photo Raul Hernandez
      Raul Hernandez

      Please help, I can not search by text or keyword, I do not see the option. This is annoying.
      Searching by tag is a very bad and does not give the desired results.

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Raul,

      There used to be an option to filter the content view for discussions based on a free text entry, but it looks like it is gone now 🙁

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Audrey Stevenson
      Audrey Stevenson

      Hi Ethan,

      IT had to disable that for now due to the performance issues. See Oliver's release notes document: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-25403.

      Regards,
      Audrey

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      That's right Audrey. Luckily we opened the site to Google crawlers at the same time the filter box was removed to users can now use Google to find SCN content.

      Here are some search tips on how to use Google and limit search results to SCN discussions only: http://scn.sap.com/community/about/blog/2012/03/26/update-on-new-scn-results-in-google-and-other-external-search-engines#See_for_Yourself_Search_Tips

      Author's profile photo Raul Hernandez
      Raul Hernandez

      Ethan, Audrey and Jason. Tanks.

      I will check your suggestions.

      Regards

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I have created an idea about the loss of the old content with the old links. Some of the urls those in the articles or in our favourites look like out of reach in the new SCN. If you'd like to participate, it is here;

      https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/ideas/9615

      Thanks,

      Ceyhun

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Ceyhun,

      This sounds a bit more like a bug report, as I think those old links are actually supposed to work. If you create a discussion in the SCN Bug Reporting space with examples of links that don't work, I think it will be fixed or at least the issue will probably be explained.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      For the launch I kept track of different URL variations from the old forums that were not redirecting. This has been very frustrating for users trying to access the 20 million+ threads and messages we have in the SCN discussions.

      These have all been reported over the past two weeks.  The good news is that I've seen most of the major fixes for broken redirects go through QA over the past 48hrs.  Fingers crossed, we should see the fixes go live early next week. 😎

      Author's profile photo Frank Buchholz
      Frank Buchholz

      It's incredible that I was forced to give 5 stars for a blog link this... but whithout it I was lost.

      Author's profile photo Dmitry Kalmykov
      Dmitry Kalmykov

      Dear Ethan,

      in the discussion for Knowledge Management (which is now Enterprise Content Management according to forum mapping) http://scn.sap.com/community/ecm, there are only few dicsussions available (strating from 16 March 2012). There is no old posts.

      Where can I find those?

      Another thing: previously I was able to use google for search but now all google search results points for ECN error page (page not found). It was very conveninet to search on google (including SDN content and not ONLY SDN).

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dmitry,

      Some content appears to be missing (in some forums a *lot* of content). If you see missing content, create a discussion in the SCN Bugs space and the SCN team will take care of the problem.

      Google search should now be working (see http://scn.sap.com/community/about/blog/2012/03/26/update-on-new-scn-results-in-google-and-other-external-search-engines), but if the content wasn't migrated then Google won't find it. So the two problems you are seeing are probably related.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Dmitry Kalmykov
      Dmitry Kalmykov

      Thanks Ethan,  already did.

      But the problem is that old perfectly-working SDN was killed for sake of raw beta which does not work. SAP consultants all over the world like me used it in daily work in implementation projects etc, no need to explain that. Now this piece of information simply made unavailable for several weeks already, and time is money. And how many weeks it will take to get it back? Looking at the table of already known issues I can assume not one week.

      It is not only us consultants that are suffering due to this it is also customers finally, because of delays in problem solving. Why not keep both system parallel for some time or at least make testing/release not at this raw stage? imagine that all SAP projects would be delivered like this raw new SCN...

      I simply cannot believe that SAP made such a trick on us consultants...

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dmitry,

      It's worth remembering that old system definitely didn't work perfectly. It worked in a way that we were used to (and righteously annoyed with, in my case at least).

      I've seen a lot of the sentiment you are expressing here. I'd suggest thinking about it like this: If a consultant cannot do the job without the SCN forums, then that consultant is not providing very much value to their customer. I find that the value and expertise a consultant can provide is directly related to the rate that consultant can command. This is an opportunity to improve your knowledge, skills, and consulting rate by getting good at solving problems in a different way.

      Best regards,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Dmitry Kalmykov
      Dmitry Kalmykov

      of course you are right. Maybe I should express myself more clearly: it does not matter if old one was bad and new one is good. We can get used to any interface, its not a problem. Of course SCN is not main source of knowledge. But we had this tool before, now we dont have it. If I can find solution within 10 minutes instead of spending hours in debugging or settings why I should not use this? If you have remote control for TV why not use it and switch channels by buttons on TV? And it was already in place, not need for additional effort. Time spent for solution/education finally adds to cost of implementation/ownership and to total costs. Why SAP would want to return to times without SDN/SCN and loose all benefits it provided to everyone (consultants,customersmsAP finally)?

      Was not it easy enough to leave old forums as they were for the transitional period (even without allowing to post into it, if data migration is an issue)?

      After all if SAP dont want us to use SCN why to offer this service? I dont get you idea, sorry. "getting good at solving problems in a different way" - well, consultants will communicate, through SCN or via other resources. And wasn't it SAP developing and promoting SDN/SCN for the benefits of everyone? 10 years ago we implemented projects without SDN, 50 years ago we watched TVs without remote controls... what is the reason to stop using remote control now?

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dmitry,

      Were all benefits lost? No, I don't think so. A space that you are particularly interested in has clearly had problems. As I'm sure you know, in any migration some things get lost and it seems that in this migration you have received a not-so-good experience. I appreciate that.

      But the point of my request to look at it differently was to try to get you to examine what you are saying. You are using very extreme ways of describing what is going on, and in fact the result is that what you are saying is actually not true. SCN is still here and the vast majority of the information on SCN is still here.

      Regarding other options - check out the brand new help.sap.com. It's great! And of course the service marketplace is still there. It's not so great though 🙂

      I'm sure the SCN team is working hard on fixing the problems. Imagine how much slower it would be going if they had to simultaneously maintain the old system for people to use!

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Ethan: thanks for jumping in here and offering a really valuable perspective.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Dmitry...as Ethan said, we (SCN team ) are aware that some discussion threads are missing, and are working to fix this. Are the discussions you're looking for only the ones from the KM/ECM space?

      Author's profile photo Dmitry Kalmykov
      Dmitry Kalmykov

      Hi Patrick,

      up to now I only noticed KM/ECM, thats what I am interested in right now.

      Still curious why it was not possible to leave old SDN (e.g. move it to other URL) for transition period, without allowing add/change...

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Dmitry...I think this is an example of some of the bug in which some of our discussion forums were migrated while some got "left behind" - and we're working on a fix for this. I understand your comment about leaving both sites available during the transition, but in order for us to migrate the content taht we did migrate, we needed to basically "flip the switch" - turn off the old and turn on the new. I will check on this to see where these missing discussions are.

      Author's profile photo Tobias Hofmann
      Tobias Hofmann

      Patrick,

      some is good: (almost) all is gone. Detlev Beutner pointed that fact out soon after new SCN went live. SCN also recognized that fact and we will have to wait until the SCN team finds some time to migrate the forum.

      That's particular sad as SAP Portal KM is bad documented by SAP (examples are from 2004, 2005 and only for EP 6) and the forums were the only area where someone could find information on how to configure or develop for KM.

      Ethan Jewett: For people that depend on that "lost" content it does not help saying

      if a consultant cannot do the job without the SCN forums, then that consultant is not providing very much value to their customer

      A consequence can be that SCN users do not trust SCN anymore when it comes to preserve information and they will save their knowledge, code examples on their local computer instead of sharing it; knowing that their answers are out there: just a Google search away. SCN may have migrated 99% of the content without errors, for someone that depends on the missing 1%, it is 100% not migrated. Currently, we have to wait until the missing 1% are also migrated.

      Someone can please share a road map or date when we can expect the KM forum content to be back online? It is nice to get blogs about performance measuring or Google integration and a bug forum / doc, but where can I get a status update on missing content and the recovery process?

      Talking about Google: until last week I was able to at least search for the content at Google, but after SCN opened the site for the crawler, the content is also gone from Google. At least the error pages when clicking the Google search result are solved 😆

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Tobias,

      It may not help, but it is nonetheless true, I think. 🙂 I simply don't give much credence to the complaint when it is couched in these terms. That was part of my point.

      My other point, as I tried to make clear later on, is that extreme statements like saying that the new SCN is useless or exaggerating the extent of problems, are unhelpful. These types of statements are at least as unhelpful as if people from the SCN team were to claim that all is well and we should all just be happy. If people want to be taken seriously than I think they should make a serious attempt to reflect reality in their statements.

      I get that the fact that this content was left behind is a major problem, and I get that it is somewhat painful for many who relied on it. However, while it is bad, it is not a disaster and the SCN team has made clear that they will address the problem.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Dmitry Kalmykov
      Dmitry Kalmykov

      Ethan,

      I was indeed a little too emotional about it. Lets put aside the form in which I communicated my message and concentrate on the message itself.

      If SCN community is important for SAP then the communication tools (like SCN site) should be treated as important. Saying "This is an opportunity to improve your knowledge, skills, and consulting rate by getting good at solving problems in a different way." and " while it is bad, it is not a disaster" you are saying that "SCN is not so important, even it it does not work for couple of months, its not a problem".

      However, millions of posts and strategy claimed by SAP bosses shows differently.

      When new SAP release is released it is tested thouroughly before ramp-up. While here raw beta was released and bugs are not fixed for one month already. And dont tell that it is working - the system can not be considered succesfully implemented until all important legacy data is properly imported. At least in KM part I see only 1% of whole data - so KM discussion are considered not working until all content is migrated. If all ERP systems of customers were upgraded this way it indeed would be a disaster.

      While SCN of course is not so critical as ERP system legacy data, in a way we consultants are customers of SCN. My message is as follows:

      Transition to new SCN is not well done, it should not have caused such long interruption and bug-fixing period.

      Agree to Tobias, that road map with schedule of bug-fixing would help, so we dont bother visit SCN until that time.

      If SCN is treated important by SAP then it should be done properly, the same way other SAP products/projects done, without letting experiments and beta-testing on whole SCN community. If SCN is not important then why at all bother to upgrade?

      And last point: your statement "This is an opportunity to improve your knowledge, skills, and consulting rate by getting good at solving problems in a different way" is comletely irrelevant to the topic of discussion. We are not discussing here my level of expertise, sorry. SCN is used by consultants with ANY level of expertise. If you think that it is used only by starters then you are mistaken.

      Dmitry

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Dmitry,

      Perhaps my statement was irrelevant to the issue. Regardless of its relevance, I am sorry for implying that you are not a skilled consultant and that your opinion doesn't hold weight. I should not have pre-judged you like that based the way you use SCN. That wasn't fair to you and I apologize.

      I think your summary of the situation in this message is much more balanced. The migration and go-live was certainly ... imperfect in many ways, and in the KM area it sounds like it was at an unacceptable level, even for a non-mission-critical system like SCN.

      A roadmap would indeed be helpful, but I think the effort to create something like a roadmap will slow down the job of actually fixing the problem. I'm not in a position to know if putting in that effort is the right decision. If it is possible, it would certainly help, but I'd rather just see the content returned to the new SCN as quickly as possible.

      Best regards,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Oliver Kohl
      Oliver Kohl

      Hi Tobias,

      we are aware of the missing KMC forum and if all goes well we should be able to have it in about a week or so back.

      Best,
        Oliver

      Author's profile photo Tobias Hofmann
      Tobias Hofmann

      Thanks for the update!

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      There's a nice shortcut to a personalized view of the New SCN discussions: http://scn.sap.com/threads > Notice the filter options on the left

      More details: Shortcut to Discussions (Forum) Threads

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks, Jason...Tobias, I hope this helped.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ethan,

      For a limited time atleast, SDN users should be allowed the option to switch back to the old version and give the users their space and time to adjust to the new one. Now finding our way into SDN is a harrowing experience. Very frequently, we check SDN with a view to find an answer to our issue while at work with reasonable urgency and not casually browse over a coffee. With the previous version,this was possible in a few seconds. Work productivity was superb. Now searching through SDN post is near harrowing.To reach the required discussion, Google works better than searching within SDN. 😆

      If there are heaps advantages with the new version, users should definitely have their time to adjust to the new version. Until then, the SDN and SCN should coexist.i.e old view, look and feel and functionality is available by switching to the old version.

      Even small SAP projects undergo change management and training. This is affecting the entire community of SAP: Consultants,developers, Customers etc and the change to new SCN was so sudden and blunt. Not sure if someone suggested this idea of ability to flip between old and new versions for a period. In the new mire called SDN or SCN I am lost.

      This post for example, in the old SDN world, I had a preview option. This is casually pulled out. Not sure what was the great mileage derived, but I simply lost the previlege of previewing my post. I had to keep posting and editing a few times Look at the tool bar above as I write this post, Insert Video ..? Emoticons ..? (May be a noisy movie emoticon is missing here...)

      This is just my two cents.

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      Yeah, Google does work better: http://bit.ly/new-scn-search > This is something I spent all night dreaming up and morning working on: enjoy.

      At least we have a working model on what we want out of site search 🙂

      Author's profile photo Tobias Hofmann
      Tobias Hofmann

      Gopalan,

      should be allowed the option to switch back to the old version

      That's impossible by architecture. For that SCN has to bring up the old SCN, incl. servers, URL, etc and sync the content created there and here.

      the change to new SCN was so sudden and blunt

      The change was announced months ahead of the go-live and previews of SCN were available at SAP events, on the old SCN and on youtube. Change was communicated, and the fact the layout is completely different from what we were used to shouldn't be mistaken as a failure or rejection.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I dont agree to the statement that it is not possible to have both (old & new) parallel just because of architecture..., it would have planned in that way..then it would have been possible.... For example, the gmail(new & old ) both were available until recently when there was a switch to the new functionality. There was an option to the user to get it back until he gets comfortable with the new one. I totally agree with Dmitry and Gopalan views. This new transformation is absolutely not a smooth travel.  I dont understand, when there is a way to do it in very smother way, why this is being done in this way? i also got annoyed with Ethan reply to Dmitry and completely agree with the  Dmitry. 

      We all know that the information is knowledge, no body is perfect and cant put everything in our brains to complete the tasks. you cant just make statements like the above.

      We are all having problem with the new SCN forum. Please try to address these issues rather to convince with unuseful replies.

      cheers,

      vivek.

      Author's profile photo Jason Lax
      Jason Lax

      Hi Vivek,

      Sorry: the gmail analogy isn't comparable to SCN's migration.  The migration merged 3 separate systems across 3 different domains into a single, brand new platform.  All the data was imported so it's not just the interface that changed but how the data is stored aswell. 

      Anyhow, we're beyond this now. 

      I am encouraged that users are still contributing and using SCN.  There are still going to be more bumps in the road so we encourage you to provide your feedback in the correct spaces in order to influence the ongoing development.

      Author's profile photo Tobias Hofmann
      Tobias Hofmann

      Gmail old vs. new. I think you don't know what was really done by the SCN team when they migrated to the new SCN. This wasn't just adding a new look&feel and add some functionality. This is a completely new system.

      You have to compare it to a OS upgrade of your computer: from Windows 3.11 to Kubuntu.while throwing away the old computer and buy a new one. The only thing of your old system is the ISO image to find data that was not migrated, but you cannot even think about returning your ISO image won't work on your new computer.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I dont agree to the statement that it is not possible to have both (old & new) parallel just because of architecture..., it would have planned in that way..then it would have been possible.... For example, the gmail(new & old ) both were available until recently when there was a switch to the new functionality. There was an option to the user to get it back until he gets comfortable with the new one. I totally agree with Dmitry and Gopalan views. This new transformation is absolutely not a smooth travel.  I dont understand, when there is a way to do it in very smother way, why this is being done in this way? i also got annoyed with Ethan reply to Dmitry and completely agree with the  Dmitry. 

      We all know that the information is knowledge, no body is perfect and cant put everything in our brains to complete the tasks. you cant just make statements like the above.

      We are all having problem with the new SCN forum. Please try to address these issues rather to convince with unuseful replies.

      cheers,

      vivek.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      How do i perform searches on a particular forum ??

      Author's profile photo Oliver Kohl
      Oliver Kohl

      Hi Ethan,

      wow I totally wasn't aware of this blog post. You did some great communication here in that comments. Thanks a lot for that!

      Just one a side note, we changed the default view for the content browser with the release on 3-26-2012 to be the detail view by default for all users. You can see that in the SCN Release Notes

      "SCNSBS-1624: Change Default Content Browser View to Details for All Registered Users"

      Great work mate! This blog post will get tracked from now on.

      Oliver

      Author's profile photo Case Ahr
      Case Ahr

      My only complaints so far are:

      • Where can we format our answers as <CODE>?  This helps IMMENSELY in ABAP forums.
      • Old posts have too much whitespace in them due to automatic space after paragraphs
      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Case,

      In the forums, you can get code formatting by creating a response, then clicking the small link "advanced editor". In the advanced editor you'll see a button on the toolbar that looks like a ">>". Click this, then choose "Syntax highlighting" and whatever language you want (ABAP is, unfortunately, not an option at the moment, but choose different ones and see how they work).

      Regarding the old posts having too much white-space, that should now be fixed, but you may need to clear your browser cache and refresh, as the offending CSS files seemed to stick around longer than they should 🙂

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      This is really helpful...thanks, Ethan.

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks to you Patrick and Oliver Kohl for all you guys have been doing!

      Author's profile photo Case Ahr
      Case Ahr

      Regarding the <CODE> formatting.  Are there plans to be able to copy the code without the line numbers?  The line numbers and zebra-striping make the code nice and readable, but it kinda screws up being able to copy and paste like the old format.

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      It does, doesn't it? If you open a bug report in the bug reporting section or in Idea Place, I think it's more likely the SCN team will see it. I think this would definitely be something worth reporting. My guess is that it is a Jive problem, but probably something they will be eager to fix.

      Author's profile photo Matt Fraser
      Matt Fraser

      So far, my biggest issue with the new format is performance.  Browsing through these comments, for instance, was an exercise in patience as I waited for the page to catch up with my attempts to scroll.  Clicking on the "add comment" button to write this resulted in more than a minute's wait before I was able to begin typing.  Correcting a typo I just made in that previous sentence was painful, as clicking to move the cursor to the error meant about 20 seconds of waiting before I could take any other action.  Hitting backspace at any point invokes a small delay, so even typing is significantly slowed down.  I should point out that my office has a very fast Internet connection, I believe well in excess of 200Mbps.  The issue is that we, probably like many other organizations, do not have the funds to upgrade our PCs every other year, so many of us, even in IT, are continuing to use four- and five-year-old XP machines.  Because of legacy applications not yet upgraded, we are still using IE7.  I can hear the fan on my PC speed up and get loud when I scroll through this thread as my CPU heats up to deal with all the gadgets and widgets that the page must be loading.  To be fair, I find other vendor websites are guilty of forgetting that their customers don't all have the latest, fastest PCs also.  I'm sure these performance-hogging and not-perfectly-backward-compatible features bring some new and wonderful experience to SDN, but if it is at the cost of basic usability (like having the cursor keep up with normal typing speeds), are they really worth it?  From reading the comments above, it seems a number of features enjoyed in the old SDN (like the indicator of whether a post has been read) are simply not part of the new package, and now users are being advised of all sorts of workarounds they can implement to reproduce a facsimile of the old functionality.  I have to agree with Dmitry (forgive me if I don't scroll up to check correct spelling of his name; I don't have the patience to wait for the screen to catch up!); whether one is a consultant or customer, experienced or a beginner, SDN has become an important tool in the arsenal of those of us who support SAP, and that tool has just become harder to use.

      Ok, my rant is over.  I will agree that the old interface didn't look great, and was not easy to navigate for newbies.  I look forward to these issues being corrected (quickly!) and the new SDN (sorry, SCN now) becoming a great tool, again.

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Matt,

      I'm sure you're aware of this, but IE7 is a real problem, both for users like you and for those who maintain websites. I won't say it is impossible, but it is really really difficult to make a modern website that works properly in modern browsers and also works decently in IE7. The result is that a lot of new websites just don't support IE7.

      Has your organization considered switching to Firefox or Chrome? Both of these browsers should run fine on your Windows XP machines, and they should do a much better job of running SCN and other websites than IE7 will.

      All that said, I sympathize with the problem, and even to me with my Chrome & Safari browsers Jive does seem a bit slow sometimes.

      Good luck!

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Ethan,

      when I follow forum/discussion than how do I unfollow them? I do not see any option for that....

      Harshil Desai

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Harshil,

      Just click the same link again (it changes from "Follow" to "Following" on the first click, and then back to "Follow" on the second click):

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you Ethan for reply but it does not work like that. I am using IE 9. I tried that before question.

      Regards,

      Harshil

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      I tried it on Chrome as well and same result. Do not work.

      Harshil

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      I think I have seen some others report the same problem. For me it has never been an issue. I'm sorry 🙁 You might search the SCN Bug Reporting space and see if you can find reports of the issue.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Martin Maruskin
      Martin Maruskin

      Hi Harshil, according SCN Known Issues List available at:

      http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-24192

      issue ID SCNSBS-1509 fits your issue. As you can see issue is still open. So I hope someone from SCN development is taking care about it.

      BR, martin

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you for update. I shall keep track of this bug.

      Harshil

      Author's profile photo Koenraad Janssens
      Koenraad Janssens

      First visit on the new look-and-feel forum and already very annoyed.

      I would like to be able to search within a certain sub category instead of the whole community in order to filter out a lot of unrelevant answers.

      Author's profile photo Ethan Jewett
      Ethan Jewett
      Blog Post Author

      Agreed, we need that capability back. It was here when the site launched but was removed because it had a bad affect on performance, I believe. I do think that the SCN team is working on bringing back the ability to search in individual spaces.

      Cheers,

      Ethan

      Author's profile photo Oliver Kohl
      Oliver Kohl

      Working on it!