A Glimpse Ahead: New Community, New Missions

UPDATE: We had originally announced that, as part of our move to a new community platform, we would retire current SCN missions on May 31, 2016. Due to a variety of project factors, however, we have postponed the retirement of these missions. The new retirement date is to be determined, and we’ll report it as soon as it’s been decided. For now, you can continue to earn SCN missions — and, as noted below, you will receive recognition for these achievements when we launch the new community experience.

The online world for SAP is changing. We are moving away from the space concept and into a world where content is aggregated around tags. We are implementing new technologies and platforms that bring with them best-of breed features like the authoring permissions concept of our new blogging system. We are aligning with industry standards and also internal SAP 1DX standards, which leads to changes such as the discontinuation of ratings on blogs in the future. And we can take advantage of evolutionary improvements in the gamification world. Things like looking more broadly at a person’s contribution to come up with a fairer depiction of reputation.

All of these changes will have an effect on the mission set that we currently have in place on SCN. With the coming platform changes, it will no longer be possible to meet the requirements of most missions since some of the current mission requirements are based on activities that will no longer be available, such as rating. So we must retire the current mission set around the time we launch the new Community Experience.

Missions to Be Retired

One group of missions in our mission set that will need to be retired are the missions associated with the various content types of our current platform, such as the Tutor series for documents, the Answer Hero series for questions and discussions, and the Storyteller series for blog posts. When we launch a new blogging system and Q&A system, these existing missions will no longer work because the activities upon which some of the requirements are based are not available in the new platform. So we need to put together a new set of these core content missions, designed to work with the platforms we will have in place when we launch the Community Experience in 1DX.

List of Content Type Missions To Be Retired:

I Blogged!
In a Blogging Mood
Storyteller
Storyteller Plus
I Was Helpful!
I Was Right!
In a Helping Mood
Answer Hero
Answer Hero Plus
I Shared Some Knowledge!
In a Knowledge Sharing Mood
Tutor
Tutor Plus
4 hidden content missions	various badges

Another group of missions that will need to change is the Onboarding missions, such as First Steps, and the Ready, Set, Go series.

Mission Name	Badge
I Was Here
First Steps
Ready (Set Go!)
Ready Set (Go!)
Ready Set Go!

The Developer Journey and Maker missions will also be retired:

Developer Journey
Maker

Space-specific missions (missions whose requirements must be filled in a particular space) will also need to be changed, since spaces are being replaced by the tagging concept. These include the Learning Hub missions, the ABAP in Eclipse missions, and others.

List of Space-Specific Missions To Be Retired:

Space	Mission Name	Badge
About SCN	In the Know
About SCN	Rock Star Blogger
SAP Training and Education	I Found the SAP Learning Hub Free Courses
ABAP in Eclipse	ABAP in Eclipse Fan
SAP Mentors	Know A Mentor
SAP Mentors	Catch a Mentor

There are several other hidden missions that will be retired, including Pay It Forward and Thought Leader.

What Lies Ahead

So what will happen to the badges that members have earned before launch of the new Community Experience, and what can you expect for missions in the future?

The good news is, members will not lose their already-earned badges. All of a member’s badges that were earned prior to launch of the new experience are planned to be displayed in a separate area in the member’s user profile after we go live (current working name for this section: “previous reputation snapshot”).

We are in the process of designing a new set of missions that will encourage members to contribute high quality content (like blogs) and answer questions, as well as missions that guide new members as they are onboarded, and recognize achievements.The mission requirements have been adjusted to accommodate the activities relevant to the new blogging and answers platforms. The new mission set is not ready to share yet, but the badges earned after launch will be part of the member’s “live” reputation area in the user profile.

Also, after careful evaluation by our gamification team, in conjunction with the Reputation Advisory Group, we have identified four badges earned prior to launch of the new experience that are planned to be “ported” so they can be displayed as part of the new, live reputation area as well. These include: Member of the Month, Moderator Spotlight, HANA Distinguished Engineer, and Featured Contributor.

Why only those four? These are the only missions/badges that meet the criteria we set up for determining “portability: into the future live reputation”

• The badge cannot be earned by the user on purpose (it’s awarded to the user).
• It cannot be earned more than once, i.e. it is not repeatable (the SAP TechEd Speaker badge, for example, is one that can be earned every year, so it does not qualify).
• The mission will still be active when we retire the other missions, i.e. it does not have a planned end date.

We are excited about launching the new set of missions for our members and their new badges, and we hope you will look forward to a new mission experience as well. More details about the timing for rolling out the new mission set will follow.