A new SAP Support Portal – focused on you
If you are an avid follower of SAP Support, you may already have heard that we are working hard on delivering a new Support Portal. A program has been running internally for around two years now to improve the content and applications hosted on the Support Portal, which is part of the Service Marketplace.
The Support Portal is used every month by around half a million SAP customers. About half of those customers use the Support Portal every day and the infrastructure needs to support 5 million knowledge base searches and a million downloads a month for starters.
The purpose of the portal is to enable access to support resources, such as the Software Download Center, xSearch, SAP Notes and license keys, as well as information about Solution Manager, remote support, the Enterprise Support Academy and much more. Over 70 applications run on the Support Portal and there are currently thousands of pages of content available.
In designing the new Support Portal and prioritizing requirements, we put the customer at the heart of our program. Our work is based on over 3 years of customer research, through surveys, usability tests, user groups and web analytics. This led to the creation of the Customer Advisory Forum in 2012, a dedicated customer feedback group. We have been discussing ideas, mock-ups, content templates and more with this group of customers and that feedback and encouragement has been crucial for the program. One great example of this is the customer input we had for our new primary navigation through card sorting and tree testing exercises that we ran with around 800 individual customers.
Much of what we heard from customers aligned with our internal thoughts and discussions, but there were also some very important points raised that surprised us. We learnt for example that a mobile-enabled website was not a priority for customers and that ‘how to’ videos are not the best vehicle for explaining applications and processes for many customers.
We are working towards a soft launch of the new Support Portal in early December 2013. This soft launch will mean that the new Support Portal runs in parallel to the existing Support Portal. We will invite and redirect customers slowly but surely towards the new portal, listening to feedback and tweaking the portal along the way. Early in the first quarter of 2014 we envisage a switchover to the new Support Portal.
Making the Support Portal more user-friendly is an awesome job! Keep up the great work!
Tremendous ! We'll look forward to it 🙂
It looks a bit nicer, like a girl with new makeup.
However I would REALLY like to see ALL PC's and Tablets at SAP modified so that they have to enter their 11-12 character Username AND Password every second screen. Or click away a certificate reauthoization popup. Maybe then this will vanish soon.
This is pathetic since YEARS, technologically 70's and I mean the last century. SAP missed an opportunity to make their portal more user friendly about that again.
Organizing the list of available patches for my company's applications in a 20 m long one row list is not user friendly either, btw.
Just a few first usage experiences...
Hi Peter-Michael,
Completely agree with the sign on piece, and believe me when I say, this too will be improved upon (as well as applications such as download).
We are going to be having extensive beta testing of applications before they launch. If you are interested in participating, check out our Usability page here and contact the team.
Usability Study FAQs | SAP Support Portal
Thanks,
Kristen
Hi Miles Escow and Kristen Scheffler,
something to think about, I'm hunting technical Basis documentation on S/4 Hana, and reading this OSS Note:
2183948 - Smart Business for S/4Hana delivery
and in there is this line....
The UI for SAP Smart Business for S/4Hana shipment is bundled within SAPUI5. SAPUI5 can be installed from the following location: www.service.sap.com -> SAP Support Portal -> Software Downloads -> Support Packages and Patches -> A - Z Index -> N -> UI ADD-ON FOR SAP NETWEAVER
Obviously that link no longer works, is somebody taking care to get all of this corrected, especially for such contempory topics as S/4Hana ?
I guess that Note is the tip of the iceberg.
Best regards,
Andy.
Hi Miles Escow and Kristen Scheffler,
something to think about, I'm hunting technical Basis documentation on S/4 Hana, and reading this OSS Note:
2183948 - Smart Business for S/4Hana delivery
and in there is this line....
The UI for SAP Smart Business for S/4Hana shipment is bundled within SAPUI5. SAPUI5 can be installed from the following location: www.service.sap.com -> SAP Support Portal -> Software Downloads -> Support Packages and Patches -> A - Z Index -> N -> UI ADD-ON FOR SAP NETWEAVER
Obviously that link no longer works, is somebody taking care to get all of this corrected, especially for such contemporary topics as S/4Hana ?
I guess that Note is the tip of the iceberg.
Best regards,
Andy.